In the span of eight days, we helped host Peacemakers Needed in Washington, D.C., led eight REPAIR-themed workshops at Faith Matters’ Restore:Connect gathering in Orem, and hosted our first Waymakers Founders Evening in Provo.

There is a time to lament our current divides. A time to engage conflict differently in our families, congregations, communities, and public life. A time to believe in peace. And a time to start building peace.

We tried to lean into the all of these ideas in our last few events.

Peacemakers Needed — Washington, D.C.

We started in Washington, D.C., with Peacemakers Needed, a collaborative event with Utah State University’s Heravi Peace Institute and the Washington, D.C. Temple Visitors’ Center.

About 150 people joined us for a day focused on exploring pluralism, democracy, religious difference, and how the work of peacemaking could potentially unite us.

Patrick Mason and Thomas Griffith opened the day with call for us to consider a Fourth American Revolution centered on pluralism and peacemaking. Ravi Gupta helped us think about what genuine interfaith dialogue requires. Jim Ferrell talked about how to combine different elements (make water) in ways that make our relationships larger than their parts. Maybree Spillsbury talked about working across political differences.

I closed the gathering with a speech about the need for wonder in peacemaking.

Thought it all we emphasized the importance of acquiring the skills of a peacemaker while also becoming convinced that some of the deepest work of peacemaking requires more than skills. Peacemaking requires a belief in things that we can’t always see. It requires, as John Paul Lederach refers to it, an igniting of the moral imagination. Wonder reminds us that the impossible is sometimes possible. It makes a way out of no way.

Restore:Connect — Orem, Utah

A few days later, we moved from Washington to Orem for Faith Matters’ Restore:Connect gathering.

This was a different experiment for us.

We combined forces with Faith Matters’ annual Restore conference to bring Waymakers workshops inside their larger annual gathering of over 2000 participants. Over two days, we offered eight workshops, filling approximately 1,275 workshop seats!

The workshops ranged the gamut from intrapersonal work with Amanda Ford and Melissa Mason; how to reconstruct your faith after deconstruction with Pastor Jamie White; Peacemaking 101 skills with Patrick Mason; and two 100-minute sessions on how people who are trying to be disciples of Jesus might navigate their own conflicts and how to then lead others to a place of peace.

The two-day event ended with Ravi Gupta, his family, and the Vaishnava community in Cache Valley sharing the peacemaking resource of kirtan. The Guptas’ kirtan event was the emotional highlight for many as we learned how to find focus, joy, and surrender in an age of distraction to better prepare ourselves for the work.

Our First Founders Evening

On Friday, Patrick, Katie, and I gathered a group of friends at the Covey home in Provo for our first Waymakers Founders Evening.

When Patrick, Katie, and I started Waymakers, we were inspired by President Nelson’s call for more peacemakers. But we also believed that people of faith need more than a call to make peace. They actually need practical tools to develop peacemaking skills.

The response over this first year has been overwhelming.

REPAIR brought 397 people together in Provo. Interfaith REPAIR sold out at 200 people in Salt Lake City. Peacemakers Needed brought another 150 people together in Washington. And our eight Restore:Connect sessions filled roughly 1,275 workshop seats.

And clearly some of you are really determined to get as many peacemaking skills as you can. More than a hundred of our participants who participated in at least two different Waymakers events attended an average of 4.43 workshops each. That’s a lot of workshops in the past year!

We received great feedback from our Founding Circle event with a strong invitation: how does Waymakers deepen the experience and help participants gain more confidence and tools of peacemaking? That’s got our brains churning and we have some exciting announcements to make soon about the future of Waymakers.

A number of generous people donated over $30,000 to help Waymakers continue its mission. We’d love your support too.

Support Waymakers

Patrick, Katie and I want to thank all of those who have contributed financially and with service to Waymakers in our first year!

Tier: Building Bridges ($5,000+)
Roger Allen
Brittany Larsen
Greg & Annie Waddoups

Tier: Repairing Relationships ($2,500+)
William & Brandi Kilmer
Chris & Debbie Wallace*
Anonymous

Tier: Closing the Distance ($1,000+)
Jeff Axson*
Pamela & Stephen Caine
Caprene Curtis*
Jay & Jane Griffith
George & Amy Handley
Holly Richardson, PhD*
Scott & Kandee

Making a Way Supporters (up to $999)
Eric & Jennifer Pack
Jennifer Preece
Brett & Shenley Puterbaugh
Anonymous*
Anonymous
Anonymous

In-Kind Support

Jeri & Stephen Covey

Earliest Supporters

Those who gave before Founders’ Evening

Jeff Axson
Rebecca Burnham
Jan Marie Cannon
Marlowe Dayley*
Christina Felt
John Graham
Melissa Hardman
Dustin Hepworth
Andy Johnston
Molly Jorgensen
William & Brandi Kilmer
Brittany Larsen*
Nicholas Raichart*
Cindy Ray
Brent Searle*
Natalie Schreyer
Yvette Wilkes
Craig Winder
Rachel Wright
Anonymous

* Recurring donors

Join a Transformative Mediation Certification Cohort

If you want to get started with professional certification training now … consider joining one of USU’s Transformative Mediation Certification Programs a 40-hour training for a select group of Utah’s leading mediators, attorneys, social workers, educators, and change agents:

Fourth Cohort
Law & Justice Center, SLC, UT
November 12-14, 2026 (30 hours in-person)

Fifth Cohort
Utah State University, Logan, UT
February 4-6, 2027 (30 hours in-person)

Sixth Cohort
Utah State University - Moab Campus, Moab, UT
April 15-17, 2027 (30 hours in-person)

Tuition: $1500 (50% discounts available for USU employees and full-time students)

I’d be honored to have you join me in one of these next cohorts, helping set the standard for transformative mediation across Utah and beyond.

Participants who complete the program will receive a Professional Certificate in Transformative Mediation jointly awarded by Utah State’s Heravi Peace Institute, Utah Dispute Resolution, and Disagree Better as well as up to 40 hours of CLE credit or Social Work Continuing Education Credit.

There are only a few spots left in our November cohort, so if you’re interested, now’s the time.

Click here for more information and to register!

Or, for those of you that prefer academic credit, there’s a new opportunity at Utah State University and the Heravi Peace Institute: we have launched a nine-credit Graduate Certificate in Conflict Transformation.

The certificate is designed for professionals across disciplines who want deeper training in constructive conflict engagement. It includes three skills-based courses in advanced communication and conflict, conversational spacemaking, and transformative mediation, taught by Jennifer Peeples, Clair Canfield, and Chad Ford.

The goal is to equip participants to foster greater understanding, empowerment, and sustainable change in personal, organizational, and community settings.

On September 19, 2026, Waymakers joined with the Heravi Peace Institute at Utah State University and the Washington D.C. Temple Visitors’ Center to host Peacemakers Needed, a gathering devoted to helping people navigate interpersonal, interfaith, and political conflict with greater understanding and skill.

Patrick Mason and Thomas Griffith gave a rousing opening, inviting us to a fourth American Revolution. Dr. Ravi Gupta taught us how to have better interfaith dialogue. Jim Ferrell taught us about the importance of connecting relationally. Maybree Spilsbury taught us how to overcome political differences and work collaboratively together.

I gave the closing keynote that afternoon. I didn’t have prepared remarks so what follows is a lightly edited excerpted version of what I said. I’ve removed some of the inevitable errors, repetition and verbal detours that come with speaking off script rather than writing, but otherwise I’ve tried to stay close to what I actually said.

About a month ago, I was in Chicago at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). Thousands of state legislators and legislative staff from across the United States gather every year for the conference. Through a partnership with Disagree Better, they asked me to come and do a workshop on peacemaking for elected officials.

I’m not normally nervous in these settings. But at the NCSL? Politicians are the worst peacemakers on the planet. How in the world are these people even going to want to come to this session?

Well, the first surprise was that they came.

The session was packed. The audience was really engaged. They asked great questions. I was surprised by how well it went.

After the workshop, this large man comes up to me and tells me:

“I’m a state senator. And I need to tell you two things.

“One, I came here to heckle you today. I don’t believe in peacemaking. I don’t think that it belongs in politics. I think politics is a blood sport and we should fight and win. That’s what we do in politics.”

“The second thing I want to tell you is that about halfway through your presentation, something happened that I can’t quite explain.”

And then he tried to articulate that there was this “sparkle” that came inside his brain. That’s the word he used: sparkle.

“As the sparkle started to grow, I quit listening to you and I started focusing on this thing. And as I started to focus on it, something dawned on me. The sparkle asked me a question.”

It was not a question I had asked in the workshop.

“Why am I a politician?”

“And as I sat there and wrestled with the answer, I tried to go all the way back to the very first time that I ran for the Senate. Back then, I wanted to pass bills and enact laws that helped people, that made people’s lives better.

“And then I started to think: It’s been several years since I’ve even passed a bill.

“And then I started to think, why haven’t I passed a bill? Well, I’ve got this opponent on the other side who is—”

I won’t use the language here. But he used the language.

“And this guy has been in my way and stopped everything. And basically, for the last two years, what I’ve been doing is fighting this guy.”

The sparkle kept growing.

“And it told me: I’m the problem. I need to change.”

And then he starts crying.

He puts his arms on my shoulder. He’s trembling. And he just starts talking about how he’s going to change. He’s going to change everything about his approach.

It was a beautiful, intimate moment in the midst of an enormous conference. His staff are standing around like, “What in the heck?” This is a tough guy.

I’ve been doing peacebuilding a really long time. I’ve been a mediator a really long time. And the more I know, the more I know, that I don’t know. There are just some things about peacemaking that are hard to explain.

There is this line from the Book of Mormon that Enos asks after he’s been praying for and receiving forgiveness:

“Lord, how is it done?” (Enos 1:7)

There are some things about peacemaking that I still don’t totally understand.

How did that encounter happen? It doesn’t make logical sense to me. I don’t understand what a sparkle is. I might try to put some religious language around it, but he didn’t and I’m not sure he needed to.

I floated through the rest of the day thinking about things that I sometimes think are impossible that may actually be possible.

Mysticism and the Spark

For the last year, I’ve been doing research on a non-peacebuilding book about religious mysticism.

I had a graduate assistant who has been fantastic, and we have been combing through the history of mysticism in lots of different religious faiths. We’ve also been looking at what it looks like inside the Latter-day Saint faith, especially going back to the early 1830s and 1840s, where there was a strong element of mysticism rippling through the faith.

We’ve been reading everything we could get our hands on about mystics, modern and ancient. I’ve been reading modern mystics like Richard Rohr and older traditions like Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and Jewish mystics.

I did all this research and didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I just knew I wanted to write a book, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with it. It has been gestating in me for the last year.

It was after that encounter in Chicago that an idea started to grow within me about what I needed to do with all of this information. And, I began to understand that maybe I was writing a peacemaking book after all.

Mystics have lots of differences. Every religion is trying to solve a certain set of problems. The questions they ask are different, and different questions lead to different answers. But I don’t want to talk about those differences here.

Through my research I’ve found five things that mystics have in common with each other (there are probably a lot more, two weeks ago I said there were three).

First—they desired a direct connection to the divine.

They didn’t want a mediated connection between themselves and their religious institutions or priests. They sought out a direct connection to God.

Second, the connection they found was ecstatic.

When they find that connection, they’re filled with joy, love, light and energy. There’s something magical and powerful happening.

While a lot of religious worship is somber, quiet and reverent, the mystics discover something deeply life-giving happening in these mystical moments that includes dancing, singing, chanting and, believe it or not, sometimes levitating and bilocating.

Yes, levitating.

Third, mystics often seek this experience in community.

This point was a misconception I had about mysticism. I primarily thought about a priest or a yogi or someone meditating alone on the top of a mountain, all by themselves.

But many mystics are not just seeking experiential connection to God individually. They’re seeking it in relationships. They’re seeking connection. The mystic experience is meant to be relational. It’s not just meant to be something private. It’s meant to connect us together.

Fourth, the more mystics know, and the closer they get to God, the more they realize they don’t know.

Seeking a direct, ecstatic experience with God comes with a large dose of humility.

God is vast, as is the universe the divine governs. God is much bigger than we thought or could expect.

And so knowledge is replaced with the knowledge that “I do not know.”

Fifth, that creation of a beginner’s mind creates wonder and awe.

Toward people. Toward the universe. Toward all living things.

And wonder and awe, in virtually all of the experiences that I’ve read, leads to love.

They fall in love with God. With people. With this broken world.

Bernard McGinn, a religious scholar who has written extensively about mysticism, describes mysticism as becoming conscious of the “direct and transformative presence of God,” and says mystical consciousness involves new ways of knowing and loving. Most importantly, he argues that the ultimate test of mystical experience is transformation—what happens to the person’s life afterward.

It’s not the knowing.

It’s the experiential relationship that is changing us in profound ways.

You can’t be a mystic and just observe from the outside.

You will be changed.

And that change is going to be profound in its implications.

The Moral Imagination

Peacebuilding scholar John Paul Lederach calls all of this “the moral imagination.”

Lederach is a Mennonite. He belongs to a Christian peace church. He’s been a mediator and reconciliation expert his whole life.

Lederach, through decades of experience, has discovered the spark.

He likens it to the creative process.

There’s something that happens in these special moments of peacebuilding that moves us from darkness to light, that changes our stony hearts into fleshy hearts.

And he puts these words around it: the moral imagination.

When I studied conflict resolution in grad school, right here in D.C. at George Mason, at what is now called the Carter School, my professors mostly talked about transactional conflict resolution.

How to get the deal.

How to get people to agree.

How to get them to a negotiated, signed agreement.

But every single one of my professors would, at one point in the course of the class, stop, contemplate, look up at the sky, and say:

“There was this one time…”

And then they would tell a story where everything changed.

It wasn’t just an agreement.

Hearts were changed.

Minds were opened.

There was love rippling through the room.

And then I would raise my hand as a curious student and say: “How is that done?”

Because that’s actually what I wanted. I didn’t want to do all the transactional stuff. I wanted to do the transformative work.

“It’s unknown,” they would say. “It just happens.”

I was so frustrated with that answer that I think I’ve spent the last 25 years trying to research the blueprint for what they were describing.

I wanted to reliably and consistently recreate the conditions for creating the moral imagination.

If you’ve read my books Dangerous Love or 70 x 7, they’re all about trying to create those spaces and figuring out how to get there.

It’s only really been in the last couple of months that I actually understand what my professors were trying to say: “It’s unknowable.”

There are some things that I can’t fully explain.

I can put all the conditions in place.

I can create the space.

But there’s something that exists outside of me that creates wonder. And all I can do is stand in awe of it.

A Marvelous Wonder

There’s a scripture that has been playing in my mind ever since that encounter in Chicago.

It’s in the Old Testament, but it’s also quoted by Nephi in the Book of Mormon and then paraphrased later in the Doctrine and Covenants.

You’re probably familiar with it:

If you’re LDS like me, you know that in the Doctrine and Covenants it becomes:

Every LDS missionary—at least when I was a missionary—had to recite that verse.

As Latter-day Saints, we love to talk about the work. We are great at putting our shoulders to the wheel.

And I actually really appreciate that about my faith.

But we’re not so great at wonder.

We spend a lot of time saying: “I know.”

And very little time saying: “I don’t know.”

And when we say “I don’t know,” it often comes up as weakness or doubt.

But no. “I don’t know” when it comes to wonder is actually something very, very different.

It’s being enmeshed in a world and a universe that is bigger than me, that is out of my control.

Yet I’m called to act in the world.

And yes, I come to understand that I don’t ultimately control the outcome.

Peacemaking is both a work and a wonder.

And so I put in the work.

Then I have come to expect that the wonder will come, always in ways I cannot fully explain.

Let me end with one of those stories.

“Who Knoweth?”

I’ve been working with Palestinians and Israelis as a peacebuilder in the Middle East for a number of years.

I could tell you story of wonder after story of wonder after story of wonder.

Here’s one that’s on my heart today.

After years of working with a Palestinian village and experiencing tremendous success, they found out that the Jerusalem municipality had decided that they needed to build a road between two Israeli settlements and had drafted the road right through the middle of the village.

From the perspective of many Palestinian residents, Israeli bureaucrats had figured out how to destroy the village after the army couldn’t do it.

To make matters worse, my closest friend, my partner in peace, who had suffered so much on the Palestinian side—his house, which his family had owned for generations, and the olive trees that his family had picked olives from, and that I had picked olives with them—were all going to be destroyed in the process.

You can imagine their rage.

Their pain.

Their anger.

A decade’s worth of peacebuilding work, and you just saw it crumbling in front of your eyes.

After months of trying to persuade people to change the course of the road, and after lawyers got involved, nothing was working

It was getting desperate.

Construction was already beginning.

As a last Hail Mary effort, I emailed every single member of the Israeli Knesset.

Every single member.

I told them what was going on, and begged someone to stop this road from being built.

There are 120 members of the Knesset.

I got one email back.

When I went to the internet and looked up the Knesset member, I was confused. This guy is not a pro-Palestinian Israeli. He was a right-wing, religious Jewish Israeli.

I kept trying to figure out why this guy responded to me. It didn’t make sense.

But he was literally the only one.

So I got on a plane from Hawaii. I flew to Israel to try to persuade this one member. I can’t tell you the amount of pressure I’m feeling on my shoulders.

I’m waiting out in the hallway of the Knesset for my meeting with him.

And I’m wearing a suit jacket. That tells you how invested I am in this. I don’t like wearing a suit jacket for anyone.

While I’m waiting, I notice there’s a piece of paper in the jacket. I pull it out. I don’t know how long it had been in there. It must have been in there for a really long time.

On this paper was the scripture — Esther 4:14.

The context is that Esther is a Jewish queen in Persia. Haman, a powerful official, has persuaded the king to issue a decree that will lead to the destruction of the Jewish people. Mordecai tells Esther that she needs to go to the king and intervene. But there’s a problem: approaching the king without being summoned could cost Esther her life.

And Mordecai says something remarkable to her: “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

In other words: Who knows? Maybe you’ve come to the kingdom for a moment exactly like this.

The scripture energized me. “Okay,” I thought, “this is a message from the heavens right now. I have come for a time like this.”

I go into the meeting. Immediately, a photographer puts me next to the Knesset member and an Israeli flag and starts taking pictures.

I’m thinking, this is odd. Why are we taking pictures?

Then he shows me into his office and says: “Tell me about LeBron James.”

Some of you may not know this, but I lived a past life as an ESPN draft analyst for the NBA.

“Now tell me about Carmelo Anthony,” he continued. “Tell me why you messed up and said Darko Miličić was going to be the greatest draft prospect of all time.”

And it starts to occur to me: Oh no. He doesn’t want to talk about changing this road. He recognized my name from a former life doing the NBA draft and thought, “Sure, I’ll meet him and talk NBA. I love the NBA.”

And I’m sitting there, and I keep trying to turn the conversation toward the road and toward peace, and he keeps waving it away saying, “I don’t want to talk about any of that. I just want to talk about the NBA.”

I’m crushed.

There’s an entire village hanging on this meeting. What am I going to tell them? The guy met with me because I used to talk about the stupid NBA draft? This was a moment where I actually regretted that I’d ever done anything with the NBA. It was getting in the way.

I was so frustrated. As I sat there, talking about the NBA, I didn’t know what to do. Every time I tried to turn the conversation back to the much more important topic, he turned it back to the NBA.

I was in despair.

Then I thought about that scripture in Esther again. There was a part of it that I hadn’t thought about before.

Mordecai actually says: “Who knows?”

He doesn’t say: “You are here for a time like this.”

It’s not a definitive statement.

He says: “Who knows?”

Maybe you’re here for a time like this.

There’s wonder in Mordecai’s statement, not definitive truth.

The question Mordecai asks stimulates inside of Esther the “moral imagination.”

And it occurs to me, sitting in that room: Maybe the scripture isn’t for me.

So I look at the Knesset member and I say: “You really love basketball.”

He says, “Absolutely.”

“Can you tell me why? I’m curious.”

He said, “Interesting story.”

He grew up loving sports but got made fun of for his religiosity. He never really felt like he belonged.

His dad put a basketball hoop in their driveway, and he would practice playing basketball day and night. All he wanted was to be part of the basketball community. Then he tried out for the team, made it, and those teammates became his best friends. It was one of the greatest moments in his life.

I said: “I want to tell you about some kids. They’re Israelis and Palestinians who are having a remarkably similar experience to you right now. They’re coming together through the game of basketball.”

We start talking about how basketball changed our lives.

And he’s listening now.

Nevertheless, every time I start talking about the road again, he responds:

“Impossible.”

“I’d get voted out if I helped move the road.”

Dead end again.

I was so close.

It was right there, only to have the solution pulled away at the last moment.

I keep thinking about Esther 4:14.

I said: “You’re religious?”

“Yeah.”

“You know the Bible?”

“Yeah.”

“You remember the story of Esther?”

“Yeah.”

“Remember the message of Esther 4:14? Perhaps you and I are in this place at exactly this time for such a thing as this.”

He paused. Tears started welling up in his eyes.

A few months later, he helped get the route of the road modified so that it did significantly less damage to the homes in the village.

Wonder

Wonder.

Awe.

How is it done?

How could anyone plan for a moment like that?

There are things about peacemaking that I still don’t understand.

But there are things that I also believe.

We live in really hard times right now. I know how bleak it looks. I experience doubt and despair just like you do.

Yes, we have to do the work. But we must also dream of, hope for, and patiently await the wonder.

Our religious forebears expected miracles to happen. They acted without knowing what the outcome was going to be. They did incredibly audacious and difficult things and expected that somehow, some way, in ways they couldn’t articulate or control, things were going to work out.

It turns out that peacemaking is much like that.

We step into the breach.

We act without always knowing how the other person is going to respond.

We show curiosity when other people don’t show it back.

We try to love our enemies.

And even though it seems impossible, I see the miracle of change happen all of the time.

I actually believe we can build peace in this world because there’s something bigger than ourselves operating in the hearts of people.

Every time someone turns toward another person—

This is wonder.

Every time a stony heart turns into a fleshy heart—

This is wonder.

Every time someone exercises forgiveness or mercy toward another person—

This is wonder.

Every time someone goes out of their way to have a conversation with someone from the other side, to start building a bridge that they can’t finish building—

This is wonder.

This is wonder.

This is wonder.

A marvelous work and a wonder is about to take place among us.

God is on the move.

The question is whether we are going to be on the move with him.

Friends, we are just a few days away from Restore:Connect, happening September 24-26 in Orem, Utah.

You can view the full agenda any time at faithmatters.org/restore.

Use the code WAYMAKERS and get 10% off :

REGISTER HERE

There are a bunch of really cool workshops this year. Here are the ones we’ve specifically curated just for you.

“Dangerous Discipleship: Following Jesus Beyond Political and Cultural Identities” - Chad Ford and Pastor Jamie White (Friday, Sept 25, 9-11 am)

In every generation, followers of Jesus have claimed their political ideologies, religious cultures, and media to reflect the “true” beliefs of Jesus. Our politics, religious communities, and even broader popular culture can gradually, and even dramatically, reshape our understanding of Jesus and His Kingdom. This interactive workshop invites us to re-examine our identities and rediscover practices that cultivate deeper discipleship to Jesus. Drawing from scripture, history, social psychology, conflict transformation theory, and the Christian contemplative tradition, participants will learn how to stay rooted in Jesus while faithfully engaging a polarized world.

REGISTER HERE

“Peacemaking 101: Where to Start” - Patrick Mason (Friday, Sept 25 at 11 am and Saturday, Sept 26 at 9 am)

In his April 2026 General Conference talk, President Oaks urged all Latter-day Saints to learn and implement “the language and methods of peacemakers.” Perhaps you have felt the desire to make peacemaking a central part of your discipleship, but you don’t quite know what it means or where to start. In this session, Patrick Mason will teach some basic concepts and skills for how you can take the next step on your journey of being a peacemaker.

REGISTER HERE

“Out of the Rubble: Rebuilding a Resilient Faith after Deconstruction” - Pastor Jamie White (Friday, Sept 25, at 2 pm)

Faith deconstruction often feels like a pretty major demolition in our lives, as if everything we once counted on to stand firm has somehow collapsed like piles of rubble all around us. It can be easy to get stuck there—in the pain, disorientation, and doubt—with no clear path for how to rebuild something better. Yet beyond our faith crisis, church hurt, or dismantling of certainty, there is hope for a deeper, more resilient faith in Christ. This workshop will explore how to rebuild, offering participants a safe space to explore what comes next without rushing the healing process, while identifying spiritual truths worth keeping, developing practices rooted in love, and embracing new rhythms of grace, mystery, and authentic community. Standing among the rubble doesn’t have to mean you’ve lost your faith. In fact, it can be the beginning of something stronger, deeper, and more faithful than before.

REGISTER HERE

“Holy Attention: An Experiential Workshop on Presence, Wonder, and Communion” by Melissa Mason and Amanda Ford (Friday, Sept 25 at 3 pm)

What does it look like to pursue God when faith feels inconsistent, attention drifts, or certainty fades? In this workshop, therapists and educators Melissa Mason and Amanda Ford invite us to explore how permission to rest can become an invitation to deeper communion with God. Through experiential practices that broaden our imagination of faithful discipleship, we’ll discover how attention, silence, breath, movement, creativity, beauty, and relationships can become pathways to deeper connection with God, ourselves, and each other.

REGISTER HERE

“Holding Sacred Conflict: Leading Through Political Division, Faith Transition, and Relationship Conflict” by Chad Ford (Saturday, Sept 26 from 10-12 pm)

Congregations are facing serious turbulence—from political polarization and cultural change to faith transitions. Many faith leaders fill ill-equipped to help their congregants navigate these difficult challenges. Too often we either end up avoiding these conversations or trying to resolve them too quickly. This workshop aims to give Bishops, Relief Society and Elders Quorum presidencies, and Young Women and Young Men leaders practical tools to step into these conflicts to create belonging, deepen understanding, and help people navigate difficult conversations while remaining rooted in Christlike love and discipleship.

REGISTER HERE

“Rooted: Centering Christ in Everything” by Patrick and Melissa Mason (Saturday, Sept 26 at 2 pm)

REGISTER HERE

Music and the Spoken Mantra: A Kirtan Musical Immersion by Ravi Gupta (Saturday, Sept 26 from 2-4 pm)

Kirtan is an ancient Hindu practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan is needed.

REGISTER HERE

There are also so many other cool workshops from our friends at Faith Matters like Thomas McConkie, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife and so many more!

Can’t make it this year? All sessions will be recorded and made available to every ticket holder following the event! There will be no livestream option this year, but the recordings can be preordered today.

REGISTER HERE

Everyone in my parents’ generation can remember where they were when they heard the news that JFK was assassinated. I can still perfectly envision the 4^th grade classroom I was sitting in when my classmates and I watched the Challenger explode.

And I’ll never forget that Tuesday morning, twenty-five years ago.

It was the beginning of my third year of graduate school. I was in my room studying when my roommate shouted from the living room, “You’ve got to see this on TV!” Like millions of Americans, I watched dumbfounded as smoke billowed from the first tower. Then the unthinkable. Another flash. An explosion. A fiery cloud. And towers crumbling as if made of flimsy foil. Filled with thousands of people.

Like every other school across the country, the University of Notre Dame immediately cancelled all classes. We were all terrified. What was happening? What to do? We did the only thing thinkable on a campus of faith: we prayed. That afternoon we gathered on the main quad in the middle of campus. The university president, a Holy Cross priest, celebrated Mass. Everyone went: Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and non-believers. Praying together, exchanging handshakes and hugs in the sign of peace, was the only thing that made sense.

A year and a half later, I visited New York with the rest of my peace studies graduate cohort. We did the serious things, like the UN, and the fun things, like a Yankees game. We also went to Ground Zero.

By then, the rubble had been removed. What remained was an enormous hole, an open wound in the heart of the city. There also remained the wooden construction walls, plastered with notices of people still looking for the loved ones who never came home.

I wept uncontrollably.

In that place, I felt a presence. The pain, suffering, and fear were visceral. I’ve felt that presence only one other time, when visiting the memorial of genocide victims in Rwanda. Those two experiences are enough for me to know that there are—in this cosmos and in this world—forces that can only be described as “darkness” and “evil” (Eph. 6:12).

What are we to do in the face of such overwhelming and obvious dark power?

We don’t look away. We don’t pretend it isn’t there. We don’t bury our heads in the sand. We don’t flinch in the face of our collective inhumanity.

Instead, we insist—stubbornly, incessantly, willfully—that there is a better way. A more excellent way. A way that can drive out the darkness. A way that can dispel the hate.

We proclaim the Way. And together, we make a way.

*****

I love that 9/11 has become a National Day of Service. That is a perfect response to what happened 25 years ago.

Let me suggest one other response, inspired by the very people who most closely witnessed the darkness. I learned about it by watching the incredibly powerful documentary film 9/11: Reclaiming Ground Zero, directed by my friend Josh Sabey. I can’t recommend the film highly enough.

Shortly after 9/11, New Yorkers began discussing what to do at the World Trade Center site. Some people, including many family members of those who died inside the buildings and whose remains were never recovered, were adamant that Ground Zero should remain empty, as any kind of rebuilding would occur literally on top of their loved ones’ ashes. Others said that the two towers should be built back exactly as they were before, maybe even bigger, as a show of defiance toward the terrorists. Still others wondered if the site would be best used for some kind of civic purpose, whether it be low-income housing, a museum, or even a stadium. A series of filled-to-capacity meetings held to discuss the question produced a predictable dynamic: the angriest people spoke loudest and longest, the crowd got whipped up, public officials sat stony-faced at the front, and everyone left the room angrier and more frustrated than when they entered.

A coalition of community leaders decided to try something different. They partnered with an organization called AmericaSpeaks, which had recently pioneered a technique using technology and facilitated conversations among large groups of people to create “a twenty-first-century town hall.” In July 2002, nearly 5000 New Yorkers, carefully selected to represent the city’s income, racial, and geographic diversity, converged on a conference center for a day of deliberations called “Listening to the City.”

Participants sat at round tables, where they were presented with a series of six preselected options for the Ground Zero site. At hundreds of tables, ordinary New Yorkers talked about their experiences, their hopes, their fears, and what they wanted to see in the rebuilding process. They listened earnestly to one another. As the conversations continued, they realized that across all their differences they shared remarkably similar values. They all thought the preapproved plans were unimaginative and dull. They wanted something better—for themselves, their city, their fallen loved ones.

Prior to the gathering, skeptics doubted that anything good could possibly emerge from putting 5000 New Yorkers in a room. Even the event organizers admitted to being nervous. The New York Daily News columnist Peter Hamill captured both the anxiety and the surprise of what happened:

We came to the vast hangar at the Javits Center expecting the worst. Put 5,000 New Yorkers in a room, charge them with planning a hunk of the New York future, and the result would be a lunatic asylum. . . . None of that happened. . . . At each table they debated in a sober, thoughtful civil way. They voted, offered comments, and moved on to the next item on the agenda. . . . Because the process was an exercise in democracy, not demagoguery, no bellowing idiots grabbed microphones to perform for the cameras. . . . In this room, “I” had given way to “we.” Yes, the assembly was boring to look at, too serious, too grave, too well-mannered for standard TV presentation. And it was absolutely thrilling. . . . We have a word for what they were doing. The word is democracy.

Carolyn Lukensmeyer, president of AmericaSpeaks, put it more succinctly: “Invite five thousand New Yorkers to a meeting, what would you expect? Food fights? Maybe even a fist fight? But what happened was democracy.”

As exhilarating as the experience was to have their voices heard in the moment, most participants said they had little faith that public officials and real estate developers would really listen to them. To their surprise, those tasked with supervising the redevelopment did, in fact, “listen to the city.” They scrapped their plans, went back to the drawing board, and solicited new proposals from architects that foregrounded the public’s clear sentiments.

The rebuilt World Trade Center—with its commercial space, transportation hub, museum, and memorial—is not just the result of stunning architectural vision. It is a testament to the power of people with vastly different backgrounds, experiences, and interests listening to one another. By listening to understand more than to win, they came up with something far greater than what any individual or small group could have envisioned on their own.

New Yorkers responded to evil and built back their city by learning how to listen.

*****

This 9/11, my prayer is that each of us will seek a better way through the various conflicts in our lives. There are many steps on the way, but one of the first steps on the journey is improving how we listen to one another.

I pray that each of us—beginning with me—can repair the frayed fabric of our society, relationship by relationship, by approaching one another with the ears of a peacemaker.

You don’t need to heal a city. You don’t need to vanquish terrorism. Start where you are. Start close in. Think of someone close to you, someone whom you have a hard time hearing. Choose to listen. Not to argue, not to win. Just to listen. Then see what happens.

If New Yorkers can do it, maybe you can too.

*****

For all you friends on the East coast—or looking for an excuse to travel there—it’s not too late to register for “Peacemakers Needed,” a half-day gathering on September 19 in Washington, DC. Co-sponsored by Waymakers, the Heravi Peace Institute at Utah State University, and the Washington, DC, Temple Visitors’ Center, we’ll spend a half day learning how to more effectively transform interpersonal, religious, and political conflicts in our lives. We’d love to see you there!

Friends, we are so pleased to announce that Waymakers will be partnering with Faith Matters to deliver some really cool Waymakers inspired workshops at Restore:Connect, happening September 24-26 in Orem, Utah.

Ticket holders will be able to register for their preferred sessions beginning September 1, and sessions will fill up quickly, so register today to make sure you can attend the ones you want!

You can view the full agenda any time at faithmatters.org/restore.

Use the code WAYMAKERS and get 10% off :

REGISTER HERE

There are a bunch of really cool workshops this year. Here are the ones we’ve specifically curated just for you.

“Dangerous Discipleship: Following Jesus Beyond Political and Cultural Identities” - Chad Ford and Pastor Jamie White (Friday, Sept 25, 9-11 am)

In every generation, followers of Jesus have claimed their political ideologies, religious cultures, and media to reflect the “true” beliefs of Jesus. Our politics, religious communities, and even broader popular culture can gradually, and even dramatically, reshape our understanding of Jesus and His Kingdom. This interactive workshop invites us to re-examine our identities and rediscover practices that cultivate deeper discipleship to Jesus. Drawing from scripture, history, social psychology, conflict transformation theory, and the Christian contemplative tradition, participants will learn how to stay rooted in Jesus while faithfully engaging a polarized world.

REGISTER HERE

“Peacemaking 101: Where to Start” - Patrick Mason (Friday, Sept 25 at 11 am and Saturday, Sept 26 at 9 am)

In his April 2026 General Conference talk, President Oaks urged all Latter-day Saints to learn and implement “the language and methods of peacemakers.” Perhaps you have felt the desire to make peacemaking a central part of your discipleship, but you don’t quite know what it means or where to start. In this session, Patrick Mason will teach some basic concepts and skills for how you can take the next step on your journey of being a peacemaker.

REGISTER HERE

“Out of the Rubble: Rebuilding a Resilient Faith after Deconstruction” - Pastor Jamie White (Friday, Sept 25, at 2 pm)

Faith deconstruction often feels like a pretty major demolition in our lives, as if everything we once counted on to stand firm has somehow collapsed like piles of rubble all around us. It can be easy to get stuck there—in the pain, disorientation, and doubt—with no clear path for how to rebuild something better. Yet beyond our faith crisis, church hurt, or dismantling of certainty, there is hope for a deeper, more resilient faith in Christ. This workshop will explore how to rebuild, offering participants a safe space to explore what comes next without rushing the healing process, while identifying spiritual truths worth keeping, developing practices rooted in love, and embracing new rhythms of grace, mystery, and authentic community. Standing among the rubble doesn’t have to mean you’ve lost your faith. In fact, it can be the beginning of something stronger, deeper, and more faithful than before.

REGISTER HERE

“Holy Attention: An Experiential Workshop on Presence, Wonder, and Communion” by Melissa Mason and Amanda Ford (Friday, Sept 25 at 3 pm)

What does it look like to pursue God when faith feels inconsistent, attention drifts, or certainty fades? In this workshop, therapists and educators Melissa Mason and Amanda Ford invite us to explore how permission to rest can become an invitation to deeper communion with God. Through experiential practices that broaden our imagination of faithful discipleship, we’ll discover how attention, silence, breath, movement, creativity, beauty, and relationships can become pathways to deeper connection with God, ourselves, and each other.

REGISTER HERE

“Holding Sacred Conflict: Leading Through Political Division, Faith Transition, and Relationship Conflict” by Chad Ford (Saturday, Sept 26 from 10-12 pm)

Congregations are facing serious turbulence—from political polarization and cultural change to faith transitions. Many faith leaders fill ill-equipped to help their congregants navigate these difficult challenges. Too often we either end up avoiding these conversations or trying to resolve them too quickly. This workshop aims to give Bishops, Relief Society and Elders Quorum presidencies, and Young Women and Young Men leaders practical tools to step into these conflicts to create belonging, deepen understanding, and help people navigate difficult conversations while remaining rooted in Christlike love and discipleship.

REGISTER HERE

“Rooted: Centering Christ in Everything” by Patrick and Melissa Mason (Saturday, Sept 26 at 2 pm)

REGISTER HERE

Music and the Spoken Mantra: A Kirtan Musical Immersion by Ravi Gupta (Saturday, Sept 26 from 2-4 pm)

Kirtan is an ancient Hindu practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan is needed.

REGISTER HERE

There are also so many other cool workshops from our friends at Faith Matters like Thomas McConkie, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife and so many more!

Can’t make it this year? All sessions will be recorded and made available to every ticket holder following the event! There will be no livestream option this year, but the recordings can be preordered today.

REGISTER HERE

And don’t forget two other Waymakers events happening in September!

September 12: A Day For Us Conference
Provo, Utah
Chad Ford will be a Keynote Speaker at A Day for Us: A One-Day Conference with Tools for Couples, Parents, and Partners.

A Day For Us is a practical, skills-based conference for Utah couples designed to help life partners and co-parents strengthen their relationship in the middle of real life. Grounded in mental health expertise and relational science, this is not just inspiration — it’s tools you can use immediately.

Use code: Chadford26 to get $5 off per ticket!

PeaceMakers Needed Conference, Sept 19, Washington D.C.

On September 19, 2026, Waymakers is excited to be co-hosting a peacemaking gathering at the Visitors’ Center of the Washington, DC Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If anyone has ever driven at night around the 495 beltway, you’ve seen the majestic temple lighting up the dark horizon. This will be a perfect setting for each of us to deepen our commitment to the vocation of peacemaking. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Peacemaking is all about bringing greater light and love into a world of conflict.

Co-sponsored by the Visitors’ Center and the Heravi Peace Institute at Utah State University, “Peacemakers Needed” will be a half-day event featuring multiple keynote addresses and interactive workshops. You’ll learn practical, skills-based strategies from experienced teachers that can help you navigate interpersonal, interfaith, and political conflict with greater understanding and confidence. In addition to me and Chad, the gathering will feature these expert practitioners:

• Judge Thomas Griffith, retired U.S. judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

• Jim Ferrell, bestselling author of You and We: A Relational Rethinking of Work, Life, and Leadership

• Ravi Gupta, Charles Redd Professor of Religious Studies at Utah State University

• Maybree Spilsbury, Director of Peacemaking at Mormon Women for Ethical Government

This event is free and open to the public (ages 16+), but registration is required. Space is limited especially in the afternoon workshops, so be sure to register now…then invite your friends to do the same!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

“Peacemakers Needed”

Saturday, September 19, 2026
1:00 PM – 5:30 PM

Washington D.C. Temple Visitors’ Center
9900 Stoneybrook Drive
Kensington, MD 20895

When Chad Ford and I launched Waymakers, we had a vision of bringing together people for peacemaking trainings all across the country (and maybe beyond!). Because we both live in Utah, as do so many of the amazing people participating in and supporting this work, it made sense for our two inaugural Repair gatherings to take place here — first in Provo, then in Salt Lake. But from the beginning, Waymakers was never meant to be a Utah-only or even Utah-centric project.

It’s time for Waymakers to hit the road!

On September 19, 2026, Waymakers is excited to be co-hosting a peacemaking gathering at the Visitors’ Center of the Washington, DC Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If anyone has ever driven at night around the 495 beltway, you’ve seen the majestic temple lighting up the dark horizon. This will be a perfect setting for each of us to deepen our commitment to the vocation of peacemaking. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Peacemaking is all about bringing greater light and love into a world of conflict.

Co-sponsored by the Visitors’ Center and the Heravi Peace Institute at Utah State University, “Peacemakers Needed” will be a half-day event featuring multiple keynote addresses and interactive workshops. You’ll learn practical, skills-based strategies from experienced teachers that can help you navigate interpersonal, interfaith, and political conflict with greater understanding and confidence. In addition to me and Chad, the gathering will feature these expert practitioners:

• Judge Thomas Griffith, retired U.S. judge, United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

• Jim Ferrell, bestselling author of You and We: A Relational Rethinking of Work, Life, and Leadership

• Ravi Gupta, Charles Redd Professor of Religious Studies at Utah State University

• Maybree Spilsbury, Director of Peacemaking at Mormon Women for Ethical Government

This event is free and open to the public (ages 16+), but registration is required. Space is limited especially in the afternoon workshops, so be sure to register now…then invite your friends to do the same!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

“Peacemakers Needed”

Saturday, September 19, 2026
1:00 PM – 5:30 PM

Washington D.C. Temple Visitors' Center
9900 Stoneybrook Drive
Kensington, MD 20895

I spent April 27–29 at the One America Movement Summit, gathered with faith leaders and peacebuilders from across traditions—pastors and rabbis, imams and organizers. These people who carry the responsibility of holding their faith communities together in a time where everything feels like it’s coming apart.

It was a powerful, hopeful and energizing experience.

I was there representing Waymakers, as well as the interfaith leadership work I do through Utah State University and the Heravi Peace Institute. The summit is the perfect convergence of those worlds for me—academic, practical, spiritual. We are all wrestling with the challenge of how to better navigate conflict in such difficult times.

There is so much at stake in the moment—deep political and social division have seeped into the relational and spiritual fabric of congregational life. This isn’t the first time we’ve faced these challenges. This challenge is a historical one, not a recent one. Still, as the tide of contempt rises, it was heartening to see an almost defiant hope with these leaders that maybe we could do something about it before it’s too late.

The One America Movement embodies some of that hope. They are doing incredible helping faith communities become sites of bridge-building. Their model—bringing together leaders across theological and political differences is imperative. They were an important partner for Waymakers when we put together our Where Peace Begins videos and our first REPAIR conference.

The Sacred Iceberg

I was invited to offer a 75-minute workshop on Transformative Mediation for Faith Leaders: Navigating Political Polarization in Congregations.

One of the core ideas I shared is this: The greatest challenge facing faith communities right now isn’t disagreement. It’s that we don’t know how to hold each other through disagreement.

Much of our public discourse is stuck in what I call debate mode. We correct. Defend. Try to convince, convert and win the conversation. There is a slew of religious actors on social media attempting this now. But in deeply polarized environments—especially in religious communities—this approach typically just hardens positions, escalates mistrust, and widens the divide.

Transformative mediation offers a more hopeful path forward:

Recognition: Helping people feel seen, and see, the humanity in others as well as their contribution to the conflict
Empowerment: Helping people feel like conflict isn’t just happening to them, but there’s something they can do about it.

Transformative mediation shifts the goal from solving a problem to changing the conflict interaction itself. One of the most important tools we explored in the workshop is what I call the Sacred Iceberg.

Most conflicts operate at the surface of the iceberg where our positions and arguments are clearly visible. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg and our conflict. Beneath the surface lies the deeper meaning and challenges of conflicts:

• Interests (what I want)

• Values (what matters to me)

• Worldviews (how I understand reality)

• Identity (who I am)

• Needs (what I must have to feel safe, seen, and whole)

In faith communities, this iceberg grows more sacred. What lies beneath involves meaning, belonging, and often a person’s relationship to God. These are often non-negotiable to a person of faith.

Conflict can become about protecting a sense of meaning, belonging or the very nature of truth itself.

Those types of conflicts aren’t solved through debate or negotiation. When the parties bring their God to the table, logic and reason aren’t the way to increased understanding. The aim of the Sacred Iceberg is to develop deeper understanding, not just to win a debate.

Some of the most powerful questions we practiced included:

• “What are you feeling right now as you think about this?”

• “What feels most important to you underneath this?”

• “What are you worried about losing?”

• “What do you need to feel seen, heard, and safe?”

As we practiced those questions it became clear that while conflict certainly can be destructive, when we hold it well and carefully, can be sacred.

The work of a faith leader in conflict is not unlike the work of a pastor, rabbi, or imam in any sacred moment:

• You help people stay present.

• You help them see each other and themselves.

• You invite them not to run away from the conflict nor abandon the relationship.

• You provide them tools to navigate both boundaries (for what I need respected) and bridges (for what I can offer another).

Healthy conflict requires all of this.

There was a moment in the workshop when all of this came together in an embodied way. We were doing role-plays and participants were discussing a tension they were holding in their own congregations and lives. Slowly, the participants in the room moved from analyzing conflict at a distance to recognizing themselves within it. As they recognized themselves, abstraction turned to focus on particular relationships, specific conversations, the names and faces of people they care about. There were tears, and a renewed desire to do the sacred work of REPAIR.

Toward More Christ-like Peacebuilding

Toward the end of the summit, I joined a smaller, more intimate gathering of Latter-day Saint interfaith peacemakers. I got to sit with Jennifer Walker Thomas, co-executive director of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, alongside The Wheatley Institute’s Paul Lambert and Elder Andrew Child, who serves as an Area Authority in the Chicago region. We were also joined by Zach Davis Executive Director of Faith Matters, along with local leaders deeply engaged in interfaith and diplomatic work, including R. Bruce Duffield and Stephen and Pamela Caine.

We spoke about the future of Latter-day Saint peacebuilding—about the theological and cultural resources within the tradition, the growing networks of interfaith engagement, and the responsibility to contribute meaningfully to the cause of peacemaking.

I left with hope. Hope that even though we live in a time marred by polarization and enmity, there are so many people quietly, persistently trying to open up the space for connection, trust, understanding, and peace. They believe that something sacred can still emerge in the space between us, and our faith has a responsibility to make conflict sacred again.

More Faith Leader Mediation Training

This Fall we are going to pilot our first 20 hour faith leader transformative mediation training in SLC. If you are interested or know someone who is, please contact Chad Ford over at chadford.substack.com

We hope you continue to join us as we explore the intersections between faith, conflict and peace and continue to engage the skills and character of Christian peace builders.

Peace Picnic

Come join Chad Ford and Patrick Mason of Waymakers, Casey McFarland of Pioneering Paradoxes and the folks at That’s Church for a Peace Picnic at Von Baer Park in Providence, Utah on Saturday May 9 from 5 to 8 pm.

We will have a potluck, some games and a cool, interactive discussion between Chad, Casey and Patrick on Chad’s book: Seventy Times Seven: Jesus’ Path to Conflict Transformation.

We’d love to see you there.

REPAIR coming to Washington DC

Our REPAIR conference is coming to Washington DC for a half day event on Saturday, September 19th for a half day event. Patrick Mason, Chad Ford, Thomas Griffith and others will be speaking and doing workshops. More details are coming. But mark you calendars now!

Come join Chad Ford and Patrick Mason of Waymakers, Casey McFarland of Pioneering Paradoxes and the folks at That’s Church for a Peace Picnic at Von Baer Park in Providence, Utah on Saturday May 9 from 5 to 8 pm.

We will have a potluck, some games and a cool, interactive discussion between Chad, Casey and Patrick on Chad’s book: Seventy Times Seven: Jesus’ Path to Conflict Transformation.

We’d love to see you there.

REPAIR coming to Washington DC

Our REPAIR conference is coming to Washington DC for a half day event on Saturday, September 19th for a half day event. Patrick Mason, Chad Ford, Thomas Griffith and others will be speaking and doing workshops. More details are coming. But mark you calendars now!

Podcasts!!!

Chad just did an entire podcast on his research and the topic of the tensions between the Second Coming and Peacebuilding with Pioneering Paradoxes! Dig into eschatology, the second coming, and Jesus at the end of the world.

You can listen to it on Spotify …

Or on Apple Podcasts

Patrick and Jennifer Walker Thomas continue the second season of the Proclaim Peace Podcast focusing on peacemaking in the Old Testament.

The last two episodes were fantastic:

Embracing Diversity and Building Peace: Lessons from the Tower of Babel w/ Daryl Davis

Joseph’s Story from Pride to Compassion: Breaking Generational Cycles w/ Rabbi Sam Spector

Articles over at the Waymaker

Chad Ford has been writing a lot lately about the intersection of peacemaking and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If you are interested, here are some of the topics he’s tackled the past few months.

Dangerous World. Dangerous Jesus. Dangerous Love: The Second Coming and Finding Jesus at the End of the World

Blessed are the Lions: A story about raising, working with and loving women peacebuilders

The Tears of Hope: In a time of outrage, here’s to tears of hope, repair, and love

We’ve Got Some Difficult Days Ahead: Following “the Way” in an Age of Protest, Power, and Fear

Over the past few days I’ve been reflecting on the beautiful gathering we shared at Interfaith REPAIR.

I want to begin with a simple word: thank you.

Thank you to the participants who came with open hearts.

Thank you to the workshop facilitators — Sam Akers, Rabbi Spector, Wendy Ulrich, David Whippy, James Patton, Pastor Jamie White and Dave White and Ravi Gupta and family — who offered their wisdom, practices, and traditions.

Thank you to Katie Searle, Jamie White and all of our volunteers for doing such a superb job organizing everything behind the scenes.

Together we created something sacred.

During the gathering I shared a story that has shaped how I understand peace. I want to share that story here.

Hearts of Stone and Flesh

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
— Ezekiel 36:26

A number of years ago, I brought nine peacebuilding students with me on a field trip to Jerusalem. We visited sacred sites and like the Western Wall, or Ha-Kotel-ha-Maaravi, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Al-aqsa Mosque and met with amazing people on all sides of the conflict.

I had often felt deeply connected to God at each of these places. My students and I pondered what it meant as we visited other sacred sites and some of them shared profound spiritual experiences

On our last day in Jerusalem we planned to go to the Dead Sea for a day of fun. One the morning of the trip, a man named Mohammad called.

His family had a small olive orchard, and the olives needed to be harvested and pressed into oil. I had nine young, able students. Would we spend the day with his family picking olives?

I rounded up our students and explained that we were taking a di!erent sort of field trip to this small Palestinian village. Many of the students were nervous. Inundated with negative images of Palestinians and Arabs for much of their lives, some were anxious about this excursion. We said a prayer and went to help despite their fears.

Mohammad greeted us warmly and put us to work. We spread tarps beneath the trees, climbed branches, and stripped olives from the limbs.

Around midday some of the Palestinians began singing childhood songs. After they sang, our students spontaneously broke into silly Primary songs they learned as children at church. They sang “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree.” Soon, the chorus of Palestinian-Primary songs resounded through the olive grove.

Two worlds singing together in an orchard.

As the sun set, the family set up a long table outside the house and brought food.

Mohammad sat at one end of the table and invited me to sit at the other. My students and his family sat between us. Before we ate, Mohammad stood to make a speech.Before we ate, Mohammad stood to speak.

“I want to thank you for taking your whole day to help my family,” he began.

“I know you have many misconceptions about our people. I see what your television and newspapers say about us. I know many Americans hate us. I hope you have seen today that we are good people. We are a family-oriented people. We would rather pick olives than make war. I hope your views of us have changed today.”

The heads of my students silently nodded. Some had tears in their eyes (mine included). Some tears came from love, others from shame for the fear they had previously felt. The speech wasn’t over.

“I want you to know that my view has changed too. I don’t like Americans much. I don’t know Mormons very well, but I don’t think I liked them either. I see Americans as spoiled and selfish. You are always putting yourselves first. But here you were, helping a family you didn’t know, working hard, getting your hands dirty, and working side-by-side with my family. Perhaps I have misjudged you, too. Perhaps we aren’t as di!erent as I have believed.”

Then he asked if I would offer the prayer for the meal.

I hesitated.

“Mohammad,” I said, “would you be offended if I prayed the way my family and faith community pray?”

He smiled.

“Of course not. I would expect you to pray the way you know.”

I asked one more favor.

“Would you be offended if we held hands while we pray? It’s a tradition in my family.”

Again he smiled and nodded.

So we all joined hands around the table.

As I bowed my head, I suddenly felt a powerful spiritual presence—so strong that I could barely speak.

Then I heard a voice saying simply, “I am here.”

I don’t recall the exact words I prayed, but I will never forget the message. God is present whenever God’s children were joined together in heart and purpose, trying to understand each other and make peace.

As I finished the prayer, I looked up. Tears were now flowing down all our cheeks. We spent the next few hours eating, sharing stories, and connecting in ways we didn’t believe were possible.

Our hearts changed as we saw each other through new eyes. Our stereotypes dissolved. We embraced people we once perceived as our enemies. This embrace opened space for them to see us with new eyes.

That night we ate together, shared stories, and embraced people we had once seen as strangers—even enemies.

And our hearts changed.

The Fleshy Heart of Interfaith REPAIR

That story came to mind many times during Interfaith REPAIR.

In workshop after workshop we saw traditions share practices of healing, repentance, reconciliation, compassion, and repair.

Different languages.
Different rituals.
Different sacred stories.

Yet something deeply familiar beneath them all.

Moments where hearts softened. People listened more deeply. We felt something sacred in the room.

In our own ways and through our own traditions, we felt the presence of God.

Thank you to everyone who helped create those moments.

The work of repair is never finished.

But gatherings like this remind me of a truth I learned long ago in an olive grove outside Jerusalem:

Whenever people come together with humility, mercy, and courage to understand each other— God is there.

Can’t wait to gather again with so many peacemakers at our next Waymakers event.

What Do We Do With All This Fracture?

I’ve been sitting with this question a lot lately.

I’ve been writing about tears and hopelessness. The fear that peacemaking is naive. The difficult challenges of balancing outrage and peacemaking.

These concerns aren’t abstract thoughts or philosophical inquiries. They’re rooted the very ordinary, very human places where fracture shows up: a conversation that goes sideways at dinner, a relationship that feels brittle, a community that no longer knows how to disagree without breaking something precious.

Across my life—as a mediator, a teacher, a person of faith—I’ve noticed something quietly hopeful: when things fall apart, people almost always go looking for tools of repair. They aren’t looking for them to “win,” nor to dominate, but to stay connected to communities that are meaningful to them. To remain in relationship and find a way forward that doesn’t require erasing difference or ourselves.

And here’s the thing we often forget: our faith traditions—all of them—have been carrying these tools for centuries. Long before conflict resolution was a field. Before mindfulness was a buzzword. Before we had language for trauma, polarization, or deconstruction. Faith traditions were teaching us how to navigate conflict.

They’ve been there all along. In stories. In rituals. In practices passed down by people who knew what it meant to live through rupture—and still choose connection.

That’s the heart behind our gathering of peacemakers at Interfaith REPAIR on Friday March 6th.

This isn’t a gathering where you sit and take notes, debate about whose theology is right, nor a space that requires you to believe anything in particular. It’s a day set aside to practice something many of us are aching for: learning across difference—with curiosity, humility, and courage.

One of my favorite moments from past gatherings like this is watching people intentionally step into a workshop outside their own tradition. Someone raised Christian learning from a rabbi about sacred disagreement. A secular activist discovering Buddhist practices of compassion. A lifelong believer sitting with doubt—not as a failure, but as a teacher.

What happens in those rooms is rarely flashy. It’s quieter than that. But it’s real. People soften. They listen differently. They leave with language and practices they can actually use—at home, at work, in the places where conflict isn’t theoretical but deeply personal.

And maybe more importantly we do the one thing polarization invites us not to do: we gather, intentionally across difference, and lean into that difference, not away from it. In a world that feels increasingly loud, reactive, and brittle, choosing to spend a full day practicing repair is a countercultural act.

It says: I want to stay human.
It says: I want better tools.
It says: I don’t want to give up on relationship.

We’re about a week out now. The room is nearly full. And I can feel that familiar mix of gratitude and anticipation—the sense that something meaningful is about to happen because people said yes to showing up.

If you’ve been feeling tired of the noise.
If you’re hungry for depth instead of hot takes.
If you want to learn from wisdom that didn’t start on social media.
If you’re curious—not certain, just curious.
There may still be a seat for you.

Not because we need more bodies in a room.

But because these kinds of spaces only work when enough of us decide that repair—within ourselves, between one another, and across traditions—is worth our time.

I hope you’ll consider joining us.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

When: Friday, March 6, 9 AM - 5 PM MT

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City, 12 C St E, Salt Lake City, 84103

Check out the schedule, workshop descriptions and facilitators’ bios below!

FULL SCHEDULE: Friday March 6, 2026

8:30 AM – Arrive for check-in

• 9:00 AM – Opening remarks with Chad Ford & Patrick Mason

• 9:30–12:30 – Morning workshop of choice (three hours)

• 12:30–1:30 – Lunch* & Peacemaker Mingle

• 1:30–4:30 – Afternoon workshop of choice (three hours)

• 4:30–5:00 – Closing remarks with Ravi Gupta

*Lunch is included with ticket purchase.

Tickets cost $100 and are for full-day participation; event access includes one morning workshop, one afternoon workshop, and lunch.

Space is limited to just 250 tickets!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

“Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World”

• Indigenous and faith based approaches to religious ecology with David Whippy
  Workshop Description: Environmental harm points to broken relationships—with the land, within and between communities, and with the sacred responsibility many of our faith traditions teach. In this interactive workshop, David will lead a discussion on Religious Ecology as a faith-related human practice of repair and reconciliation.

  Through reflection, small-group dialogue, and brief shared insights, you will explore how different faiths understand responsibility, stewardship, and care for the Earth. Together, we will listen across differences, hold space for accountability and hope, and consider how repairing the world includes healing our relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart”

• Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness with Sam Akers
  Workshop Description: Sam will lead participants in heart forward mindfulness practices, small group dialogues and gentle movement all through the lens of the friendly, kind and compassionate heart of Metta. Metta, the Pali word for friendship or kindness, is for all beings, without exception, including ourselves. Here, you’ll explore how having an open heart naturally supports healing and inner peace.

NEARLY SOLD OUT “Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra”

• Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra with Ravi Gupta & family
  Workshop Description: Kirtan is an ancient practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan needed.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

• Forgiveness perspectives from the Christian tradition with Reverend Jamie White, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City
  Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

• Faith de-/reconstruction with Reverend Jamie White and husband Dave White

  Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”

• Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement with Rabbi Sam Spector, Kol Ami
  Workshop Description: Rabbi Spector shares how confrontation and disagreements can lead to growth and understanding and create sacredness in your communities. We will see examples from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Talmud that show how we can hold strong differences in view and yet still maintain respect and understanding. Through finding dignity in differences, we can create communities and societies that are safe and thoughtful despite lacking consensus.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice”

• Exploring the core elements of reconciliation with James Patton, Quaker Peacemaker
  Workshop Description: Whether between individuals or communities, reconciling a relationship damaged by harm is a challenge that often involves unpacking convoluted motives, perceptions of history, abiding pain, anger, and fear, and complex justifications for destructive behaviors. While each situation will be different, and deeply marked by individual experiences, some basic and principles apply across reconciliation efforts, such as addressing the past, confronting perceptions of the other, and seeking to transition beyond acts of harm—including the delicate nuances of dialogue, restitution, and pardon. This workshop explores the ideas and practices of reconciliation, with the objective of moving a broken relationship towards a less broken one.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

• Navigating the paradoxes of committed relationships with Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, author | Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Workshop Description: The possibility of eternal marriage and family is a fundamental doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, the prospect of an eternal relationship sounds like anything but heaven when we can hardly get through dinner together today. This workshop will explore the stages of long-term committed relationships—in families and even with God—then suggest tools for navigating relationship paradoxes that call for both individual flourishing and committed connection, both fixing problems and tolerating them, and both holding on and letting go. Bring your current relationship challenge or fear and let’s see if we can move the needle toward peace, hope, and flourishing—whether or not we believe in forever.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

Our friends at Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) are hosting their 9th Annual Spring Conference on March 21, 2026 at Utah Valley University.

This year’s theme invites participants to reflect on a powerful truth: throughout our nation’s history, women have played a critical role in urging America to live up to its highest values and promises. That work is not finished.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the United States, this conference asks:

• What does civic courage look like now?

• How do we meet the challenges of this moment with integrity and conviction?

• How can we imagine — and help build — a more just and hopeful future?

The gathering will bring together women committed to ethical leadership, constitutional principles, and thoughtful engagement in public life. Whether you’re deeply involved in civic work or simply feeling the pull to be more engaged, this event offers space for reflection, learning, and connection.

If you’re in or near Utah on March 21, we encourage you to learn more and consider attending.

Event details and registration HERE

At Waymakers, we believe repair matters not only in personal relationships, but in communities and civic culture as well. We’re always encouraged to see organizations creating spaces where principled dialogue and ethical commitment can grow.

If this resonates with you, we hope you’ll take a look.

REGISTER NOW

As a young woman, Rev. Jamie White would sit on her bed with clenched fists, repeating, “I will forgive. I will forgive” after suffering a sexual assault that left her pregnant.

Years later, when counseling parishioners through their own anger and grief, she reminds them that reconciliation does not come naturally over time. We have to make a deliberate choice. It may take years for that choice to do its work, but the feelings of forgiveness do eventually follow.

Life continues after tragedy, even after violent tragedy. The choice to forgive is a choice to re-enter life after being transformed by tragedy. A mentor once told Jamie: “You are going to have to figure out how to take that tragedy, that scar—that has to be your greatest treasure.”

Jamie is generously offering two workshops at our inaugural Interfaith REPAIR gathering of peacemakers at her church, First Presbyterian in SLC on March 6th.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

“When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

We’d love for you to attend one, or both of her workshops, and start the process of forgiving yourself, others and if necessary, thinking about how to navigate your own spiritual journey in the wake of trauma.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

I’ve had the honor of getting to know Pastor White over the past year and half. I’ve seen her work with parishioners and I have joked (not joking) that she’s my pastor.

Want a powerful preview of what three-hours with Pastor White might look like?

Jamie shares, powerfully, how Jesus’ example has guided her reconciliation process in my favorite Where Peace Begins videos. It’s totally worth the eight minutes of your time.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

When: Friday, March 6, 9 AM - 5 PM MT

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City, 12 C St E, Salt Lake City, 84103

Across the world’s faith traditions, faith leaders have long carried tools for peace. Sacred texts, rituals, histories, and lived practices offer pathways for repair—within ourselves, between communities, and across generations.

What: Interfaith REPAIR is a one-day gathering where participants from across faith traditions come together to explore how conflict is navigated and peace is practiced, taught, and embodied in different spiritual lineages, and how those tools can help us navigate conflict in an increasingly fractured world.

This is not a lecture-style conference. It’s an intimate, participatory, workshop-based day designed to help you engage deeply, learn across difference, and leave with tools you can use everyday in relationships at home, at work and in the world.

Who Interfaith REPAIR is for:

• Faith leaders and community organizers

• Educators and facilitators

• Activists seeking spiritual grounding

• Curious minds who love to learn about world religions, customs, traditions, and cultures. No religious affiliation required. Curiosity is enough.

We encourage you to try at least one workshop outside your own tradition and learn from a different faith community.

Check out the schedule, workshop descriptions and facilitators’ bios below!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FULL SCHEDULE: Friday March 6, 2026

8:30 AM – Arrive for check-in

• 9:00 AM – Opening remarks with Chad Ford & Patrick Mason

• 9:30–12:30 – Morning workshop of choice (three hours)

• 12:30–1:30 – Lunch* & Peacemaker Mingle

• 1:30–4:30 – Afternoon workshop of choice (three hours)

• 4:30–5:00 – Closing remarks with Ravi Gupta

*Lunch is included with ticket purchase.

Tickets cost $100 and are for full-day participation; event access includes one morning workshop, one afternoon workshop, and lunch.

Space is limited to just 200 tickets!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

“Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World”

• Indigenous and faith based approaches to religious ecology with David Whippy
  Workshop Description: Environmental harm points to broken relationships—with the land, within and between communities, and with the sacred responsibility many of our faith traditions teach. In this interactive workshop, David will lead a discussion on Religious Ecology as a faith-related human practice of repair and reconciliation.

  Through reflection, small-group dialogue, and brief shared insights, you will explore how different faiths understand responsibility, stewardship, and care for the Earth. Together, we will listen across differences, hold space for accountability and hope, and consider how repairing the world includes healing our relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

“Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart”

• Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness with Sam Akers
  Workshop Description: Sam will lead participants in heart forward mindfulness practices, small group dialogues and gentle movement all through the lens of the friendly, kind and compassionate heart of Metta. Metta, the Pali word for friendship or kindness, is for all beings, without exception, including ourselves. Here, you’ll explore how having an open heart naturally supports healing and inner peace.

NEARLY SOLD OUT “Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra”

• Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra with Ravi Gupta & family
  Workshop Description: Kirtan is an ancient practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan needed.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

• Forgiveness perspectives from the Christian tradition with Reverend Jamie White, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City
  Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

“When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

• Faith de-/reconstruction with Reverend Jamie White and husband Dave White

  Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

SOLD OUT! “Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”

• Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement with Rabbi Sam Spector, Kol Ami
  Workshop Description: Rabbi Spector shares how confrontation and disagreements can lead to growth and understanding and create sacredness in your communities. We will see examples from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Talmud that show how we can hold strong differences in view and yet still maintain respect and understanding. Through finding dignity in differences, we can create communities and societies that are safe and thoughtful despite lacking consensus.

NEARLY SOLD OUT! “The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice”

• Exploring the core elements of reconciliation with James Patton, Quaker Peacemaker
  Workshop Description: Whether between individuals or communities, reconciling a relationship damaged by harm is a challenge that often involves unpacking convoluted motives, perceptions of history, abiding pain, anger, and fear, and complex justifications for destructive behaviors. While each situation will be different, and deeply marked by individual experiences, some basic and principles apply across reconciliation efforts, such as addressing the past, confronting perceptions of the other, and seeking to transition beyond acts of harm—including the delicate nuances of dialogue, restitution, and pardon. This workshop explores the ideas and practices of reconciliation, with the objective of moving a broken relationship towards a less broken one.

“Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

• Navigating the paradoxes of committed relationships with Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, author | Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Workshop Description: The possibility of eternal marriage and family is a fundamental doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, the prospect of an eternal relationship sounds like anything but heaven when we can hardly get through dinner together today. This workshop will explore the stages of long-term committed relationships—in families and even with God—then suggest tools for navigating relationship paradoxes that call for both individual flourishing and committed connection, both fixing problems and tolerating them, and both holding on and letting go. Bring your current relationship challenge or fear and let’s see if we can move the needle toward peace, hope, and flourishing—whether or not we believe in forever.

Interfaith REPAIR is just one month away! We’ve had an amazing response from so many of you. With Rabbi Spector’s workshop already selling out and several others close to selling out, we wanted to add one more workshop by popular demand: “Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World”!

Environmental harm points to broken relationships—with the land, within and between communities, and with the sacred responsibility many of our faith traditions teach. In this interactive workshop, David will lead a discussion on Religious Ecology as a faith-related human practice of repair and reconciliation.

Through reflection, small-group dialogue, and brief shared insights, you will explore how different faiths understand responsibility, stewardship, and care for the Earth. Together, we will listen across differences, hold space for accountability and hope, and consider how repairing the world includes healing our relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

All faith traditions, spiritual paths, and levels of belief are welcome.

Facilitator bio

David Whippy is an Associate Professor at BYU–Hawaiʻi and Director of the on-campus David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding. He also serves as a faculty advisor for BYU–Hawaiʻi’s Religious Freedom and Human Dignity initiatives. Across these roles, David emphasizes peacebuilding, religious ecology, and interfaith dialogue as essential practices of responsibility and repair.

As an educator and facilitator, David designs learning spaces that explore how lived experience, culture, and faith traditions shape our relationships—with one another, across communities, and with the Earth. He teaches courses including Peace Ecology, Intercultural Peacebuilding, and Peace Education, guiding students to connect spiritual traditions with contemporary environmental and social challenges.

David’s work is deeply informed by Indigenous Fijian dialogue practices such as talanoa and veivosaki-yaga, alongside moral imagination and practical pathways toward peace and reconciliation. Together with two of his students, he will facilitate an afternoon session titled “Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World,” exploring religious ecology through dialogue, reflection, and collaborative learning, and inviting participants to consider environmental stewardship as a shared, faith-rooted act of repair.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

When: Friday, March 6, 9 AM - 5 PM MT

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City, 12 C St E, Salt Lake City, 84103

Across the world’s faith traditions, faith leaders have long carried tools for peace. Sacred texts, rituals, histories, and lived practices offer pathways for repair—within ourselves, between communities, and across generations.

What: Interfaith REPAIR is a one-day gathering where participants from across faith traditions come together to explore how conflict is navigated and peace is practiced, taught, and embodied in different spiritual lineages, and how those tools can help us navigate conflict in an increasingly fractured world.

This is not a lecture-style conference. It’s an intimate, participatory, workshop-based day designed to help you engage deeply, learn across difference, and leave with tools you can use everyday in relationships at home, at work and in the world.

Who Interfaith REPAIR is for:

• Faith leaders and community organizers

• Educators and facilitators

• Activists seeking spiritual grounding

• Curious minds who love to learn about world religions, customs, traditions, and cultures. No religious affiliation required. Curiosity is enough.

We encourage you to try at least one workshop outside your own tradition and learn from a different faith community.

Check out the schedule, workshop descriptions and facilitators’ bios below!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FULL SCHEDULE: Friday March 6, 2026

8:30 AM – Arrive for check-in

• 9:00 AM – Opening remarks with Chad Ford & Patrick Mason

• 9:30–12:30 – Morning workshop of choice (three hours)

• 12:30–1:30 – Lunch* & Peacemaker Mingle

• 1:30–4:30 – Afternoon workshop of choice (three hours)

• 4:30–5:00 – Closing remarks with Ravi Gupta

*Lunch is included with ticket purchase.

Tickets cost $100 and are for full-day participation; event access includes one morning workshop, one afternoon workshop, and lunch.

Space is limited to just 200 tickets!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

“Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World”

• Indigenous and faith based approaches to religious ecology with David Whippy
  Workshop Description: Environmental harm points to broken relationships—with the land, within and between communities, and with the sacred responsibility many of our faith traditions teach. In this interactive workshop, David will lead a discussion on Religious Ecology as a faith-related human practice of repair and reconciliation.

  Through reflection, small-group dialogue, and brief shared insights, you will explore how different faiths understand responsibility, stewardship, and care for the Earth. Together, we will listen across differences, hold space for accountability and hope, and consider how repairing the world includes healing our relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

“Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart”

• Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness with Sam Akers
  Workshop Description: Sam will lead participants in heart forward mindfulness practices, small group dialogues and gentle movement all through the lens of the friendly, kind and compassionate heart of Metta. Metta, the Pali word for friendship or kindness, is for all beings, without exception, including ourselves. Here, you’ll explore how having an open heart naturally supports healing and inner peace.

NEARLY SOLD OUT “Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra”

• Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra with Ravi Gupta & family
  Workshop Description: Kirtan is an ancient practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan needed.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

• Forgiveness perspectives from the Christian tradition with Reverend Jamie White, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City
  Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

“When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

• Faith de-/reconstruction with Reverend Jamie White and husband Dave White

  Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

SOLD OUT! “Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”

• Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement with Rabbi Sam Spector, Kol Ami
  Workshop Description: Rabbi Spector shares how confrontation and disagreements can lead to growth and understanding and create sacredness in your communities. We will see examples from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Talmud that show how we can hold strong differences in view and yet still maintain respect and understanding. Through finding dignity in differences, we can create communities and societies that are safe and thoughtful despite lacking consensus.

NEARLY SELL OUT! “The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice”

• Exploring the core elements of reconciliation with James Patton, Quaker Peacemaker
  Workshop Description: Whether between individuals or communities, reconciling a relationship damaged by harm is a challenge that often involves unpacking convoluted motives, perceptions of history, abiding pain, anger, and fear, and complex justifications for destructive behaviors. While each situation will be different, and deeply marked by individual experiences, some basic and principles apply across reconciliation efforts, such as addressing the past, confronting perceptions of the other, and seeking to transition beyond acts of harm—including the delicate nuances of dialogue, restitution, and pardon. This workshop explores the ideas and practices of reconciliation, with the objective of moving a broken relationship towards a less broken one.

“Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

• Navigating the paradoxes of committed relationships with Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, author | Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Workshop Description: The possibility of eternal marriage and family is a fundamental doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, the prospect of an eternal relationship sounds like anything but heaven when we can hardly get through dinner together today. This workshop will explore the stages of long-term committed relationships—in families and even with God—then suggest tools for navigating relationship paradoxes that call for both individual flourishing and committed connection, both fixing problems and tolerating them, and both holding on and letting go. Bring your current relationship challenge or fear and let’s see if we can move the needle toward peace, hope, and flourishing—whether or not we believe in forever.

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

That changed when I went on my LDS mission. I’m grateful it was a two year experience. For roughly the first year, I was very much a student of the “Ye are not sent forth to be taught, but to teach” school. By the time the second half of my mission rolled around, and it became painfully apparent that I would not in fact baptize the entirety of the Seattle metropolitan area, I got more curious. As it turned out, I liked talking about religion, and hearing what other people thought about it. A funny thing happened: when I opened my ears at least as much as my mouth, I learned a lot.

Since then, my life has taken me to some unexpected places. To the University of Notre Dame for graduate school, where I was surrounded by Catholic and evangelical professors and fellow students, and where my neighbor and good friend was the scion of generations of Jerusalem rabbis. To Egypt for my first real job as a professor, where my best students were veiled Muslim women. To Romania for a Fulbright fellowship, where I came to appreciate the ancient mysteries of Christian Orthodoxy. And to southern California, where the prevailing religion was secularism and one of my best friends was one of the nation’s most outspoken atheists.

I have certainly had tutors in peacemaking from my own church. Eugene England had a huge influence on me; President Russell M. Nelson helped anchor my convictions; and Chad Ford is my hero.

Yet I would be impoverished as an aspiring peacebuilder if my learning was restricted just to the little plot of the garden that I personally feel called to tend. My peacebuilding vocation has been radically transformed by a Black Protestant pastor; a Vietnamese Buddhist monk; a Mennonite Bible scholar; a Hindu sage; and many, many others.

That is why I am so excited for Interfaith REPAIR. We organized this day-long training not as an exercise in interfaith dialogue — though dialogue is important. Instead, we know that each of the world’s diverse faith traditions contains deep reservoirs of wisdom about how to build peace — in your soul, your personal relationships, your congregations, and your communities.

We have assembled an all-star list of religious practitioners and leaders to lead an amazing array of workshops. Crucially, we asked them not to give a “Hinduism 101” or “Islam 101” class — there are plenty of other places where you can learn that important basic information. Instead, we asked them to reach deep into their tradition and bring forward the distinctive teachings, rituals, and practices that enhance greater peace, and then teach those concepts in such a way that workshop participants who are not affiliated with that religion can learn and apply those teachings to be more effective peacebuilders in their distinctive spheres.

I will express one disappointment I have in the program we put together: I honestly want to take every single workshop, and will have to make some hard choices. I imagine that when you look at the menu of options you’ll feel the same way.

I often come back to the teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh: “If we are not peaceful, we cannot share peace.” I believe the practice of peace is downstream from learning about core principles of peace and developing the character of peace. If you want to find greater peace in your own life, and/or to share greater peace in the part of the garden you feel called to tend, Interfaith REPAIR is for you.

Bring a friend, and I’ll see you there!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

When: Friday, March 6, 9 AM - 5 PM MT

Where: First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City, 12 C St E, Salt Lake City, 84103

Across the world’s faith traditions, faith leaders have long carried tools for peace. Sacred texts, rituals, histories, and lived practices offer pathways for repair—within ourselves, between communities, and across generations.

What: Interfaith REPAIR is a one-day gathering where participants from across faith traditions come together to explore how conflict is navigated and peace is practiced, taught, and embodied in different spiritual lineages, and how those tools can help us navigate conflict in an increasingly fractured world.

This is not a lecture-style conference. It’s an intimate, participatory, workshop-based day designed to help you engage deeply, learn across difference, and leave with tools you can use everyday in relationships at home, at work and in the world.

Who Interfaith REPAIR is for:

• Faith leaders and community organizers

• Educators and facilitators

• Activists seeking spiritual grounding

• Curious minds who love to learn about world religions, customs, traditions, and cultures. No religious affiliation required. Curiosity is enough.

We encourage you to try at least one workshop outside your own tradition and learn from a different faith community.

Check out the schedule, workshop descriptions and facilitators’ bios below!

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FULL SCHEDULE: Friday March 6, 2026

8:30 AM – Arrive for check-in

• 9:00 AM – Opening remarks with Chad Ford & Patrick Mason

• 9:30–12:30 – Morning workshop of choice (three hours)

• 12:30–1:30 – Lunch* & Peacemaker Mingle

• 1:30–4:30 – Afternoon workshop of choice (three hours)

• 4:30–5:00 – Closing remarks with Ravi Gupta

*Lunch is included with ticket purchase.

Tickets cost $100 and are for full-day participation; event access includes one morning workshop, one afternoon workshop, and lunch.

Space is limited to just 200 tickets!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

FEATURED WORKSHOPS

“Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World”

• Indigenous and faith based approaches to religious ecology with David Whippy
  Workshop Description: Environmental harm points to broken relationships—with the land, within and between communities, and with the sacred responsibility many of our faith traditions teach. In this interactive workshop, David will lead a discussion on Religious Ecology as a faith-related human practice of repair and reconciliation.
  

  Through reflection, small-group dialogue, and brief shared insights, you will explore how different faiths understand responsibility, stewardship, and care for the Earth. Together, we will listen across differences, hold space for accountability and hope, and consider how repairing the world includes healing our relationship with the living systems that sustain us.

“Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart”

• Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness with Sam Akers
  Workshop Description: Sam will lead participants in heart forward mindfulness practices, small group dialogues and gentle movement all through the lens of the friendly, kind and compassionate heart of Metta. Metta, the Pali word for friendship or kindness, is for all beings, without exception, including ourselves. Here, you’ll explore how having an open heart naturally supports healing and inner peace.

“Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra”

• Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra with Ravi Gupta & family
  Workshop Description: Kirtan is an ancient practice from India that aligns our body and mind through music and mantra. Participants in this workshop will explore the power of devotional music to create pathways of peace within ourselves and in community with others. We will learn techniques of mantra meditation as we immerse ourselves in sacred sound. No prior experience with kirtan needed.

“Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go”

• Forgiveness perspectives from the Christian tradition with Reverend Jamie White, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City
  Workshop Description: Do you feel stuck by what’s happened to you? Or something you’ve done? Not sure how to let go of your bitterness? Tired of carrying around resentment? This workshop is designed to help us process our pain, release resentment, and move towards healing as we choose forgiveness. We’ll draw from both spiritual resources and therapeutic skills-based practices to offer a variety of tools to move beyond what’s happened to us and toward freedom. Bring your grudges!

“When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other Side”

• Faith de-/reconstruction with Reverend Jamie White and husband Dave White

  Workshop Description: Questioning and critiquing religious belief isn’t really a new idea, even if ‘deconstruction’ language has gone mainstream. People have—always and everywhere—doubted and questioned their religious traditions; a natural, healthy, and necessary factor in spiritual growth. But what happens when those questions threaten to unravel everything we used to hold sacred, including relationships with loved ones who may not understand? Even more there can be often an impulse to toss out all our beliefs, like ‘the baby with the bathwater’, in our attempt to live authentically and freely. But what happens after this messy and painful season, when we discover that we still hunger for God and may want to reevaluate a life of faith? Reverend Jamie White and her husband Dave will co-host this workshop that focuses on moving through deconstruction with grace for ourselves and those we love, offers resources and practices for spiritual healing, and explores what reconstruction might look like on the other side.

“Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”

• Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement with Rabbi Sam Spector, Kol Ami
  Workshop Description: Rabbi Spector shares how confrontation and disagreements can lead to growth and understanding and create sacredness in your communities. We will see examples from the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Talmud that show how we can hold strong differences in view and yet still maintain respect and understanding. Through finding dignity in differences, we can create communities and societies that are safe and thoughtful despite lacking consensus.

“The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice”

• Exploring the core elements of reconciliation with James Patton, Quaker Peacemaker
  Workshop Description: Whether between individuals or communities, reconciling a relationship damaged by harm is a challenge that often involves unpacking convoluted motives, perceptions of history, abiding pain, anger, and fear, and complex justifications for destructive behaviors. While each situation will be different, and deeply marked by individual experiences, some basic and principles apply across reconciliation efforts, such as addressing the past, confronting perceptions of the other, and seeking to transition beyond acts of harm—including the delicate nuances of dialogue, restitution, and pardon. This workshop explores the ideas and practices of reconciliation, with the objective of moving a broken relationship towards a less broken one.

“Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

• Navigating the paradoxes of committed relationships with Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, author | Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  Workshop Description: The possibility of eternal marriage and family is a fundamental doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, the prospect of an eternal relationship sounds like anything but heaven when we can hardly get through dinner together today. This workshop will explore the stages of long-term committed relationships—in families and even with God—then suggest tools for navigating relationship paradoxes that call for both individual flourishing and committed connection, both fixing problems and tolerating them, and both holding on and letting go. Bring your current relationship challenge or fear and let’s see if we can move the needle toward peace, hope, and flourishing—whether or not we believe in forever.

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FACILITATOR BIOS

OPENING REMARKS:

CHAD FORD & PATRICK MASON

BIO: Chad Ford is an international conflict mediator, facilitator, and peace educator. While most people know him for his work at ESPN, being a basketball analyst and writer was actually his side-gig for most of the last two decades. Chad’s peacebuilding work is what defines him. Chad served as the Director of the David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding at BYU-Hawaii. for nearly twenty years where he created a major and certificate program in intercultural peacebuilding. In 2024, Chad left his position at BYU-Hawaii to join the faculty at Utah State University. Chad is serving a joint appointment with the Religious Studies department and the Heravi Peace Institute.

His first book, Dangerous Love, weaves Chad’s experiences into a deeply personal step-by-step exploration of how we transform fear and conflict. His second book, 70x7, draws on Chad’s experiences as a Christian peacebuilder to show us how Jesus’s path of practicing 70×7 has the power to repair relationships by transforming destructive conflict into constructive peace. Chad has his own substack newsletter called the Waymaker if you want to follow his latest writing, podcasts and events.

BIO: Patrick Mason holds the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University. He has written or edited several books, including Restoration: God’s Call to the 21st Century World; Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict and Planted. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Romania in 2015 and is a past president of the Mormon History Association. Patrick is frequently consulted by the national and international media on stories related to Mormon culture and history. He teaches courses on Mormonism, American religious history, and religion, violence, and peacebuilding.

WORKSHOP FACILITATORS:

David Whippy

BIO: David Whippy is an Associate Professor at BYU–Hawaiʻi and Director of the on-campus David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding. He also serves as a faculty advisor for BYU–Hawaiʻi’s Religious Freedom and Human Dignity initiatives. Across these roles, David emphasizes peacebuilding, religious ecology, and interfaith dialogue as essential practices of responsibility and repair.

As an educator and facilitator, David designs learning spaces that explore how lived experience, culture, and faith traditions shape our relationships—with one another, across communities, and with the Earth. He teaches courses including Peace Ecology, Intercultural Peacebuilding, and Peace Education, guiding students to connect spiritual traditions with contemporary environmental and social challenges.

David’s work is deeply informed by Indigenous Fijian dialogue practices such as talanoa and veivosaki-yaga, alongside moral imagination and practical pathways toward peace and reconciliation.

Together with two of his students, he will facilitate an afternoon session titled “Repairing Our Relationship with the Living World,” exploring religious ecology through dialogue, reflection, and collaborative learning, and inviting participants to consider environmental stewardship as a shared, faith-rooted act of repair.

Ravi M. Gupta

BIO: Dr. Ravi M. Gupta holds the Charles Redd Chair of Religious Studies and serves as Department Head of History at Utah State University. He has published numerous journal articles and five academic books, including most recently, Hinduism: the Primary Sources, co-authored with Dr. Jeffery Long and published by Oxford University Press. Ravi has received four teaching awards, a book award, a National Endowment for the Humanities summer fellowship, and two research fellowships at Oxford. He is a Permanent Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and a past president of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. He enjoys teaching World Religions, Hinduism, and Sanskrit at Utah State. Prior to arriving at USU, Ravi taught at the University of Florida, Centre College, and the College of William and Mary. He is regularly invited to speak to both academic and devotional audiences around the world on topics related to Hindu practice and philosophy. He lives in Logan with his wife, Amrita, and his sons, Chaitanya and Purushottam.

With his family, Ravi will facilitate two sessions of “Kirtan Immersion: Peacemaking through Music and Mantra” — Hindu ritual of inner and communal transformation through music & mantra as well as offer the event’s closing remarks.

Samantha (Sam) Akers

BIO: Samantha (Sam) Akers has been a yoga and meditation student and teacher for 30 years. She discovered the healing benefits of Buddhist meditation and yoga when she was diagnosed with several serious illnesses in her early 20’s. Her deepest healing began when she was taught Metta and how to work with chronic pain and fatigue, through mindful awareness. Over the years, Sam wanted to offer healing modalities to others and also became interested in meditation and early childhood attachment repair, studying with her teacher, George Haas for 10 years in this particular style of practice which uses traditional Buddhist practices in tandem with western psychology. Sam is a Certified Yoga Therapist, Faculty at Soma Yoga Institute, a Certified Mindfulness Teacher-Leader and a mentor through the Mindfulness Institute of Berkley, CA. She also built the first fully therapeutic yoga studio in Los Angeles and created her own method for practice, the TheraYoga Method, in 2012.

Sam’s heart home is in the Early Buddhist traditions and practices. She started SitBeLove in 2018 a platform for people to learn about secular and Buddhist mindfulness, loving kindness practices and ways to repair their relationships with themselves and others as a pathway to deep healing. She is currently the co-guiding teacher of Northern Utah Insight leading groups (sanghas) in Logan and Salt Lake City, a Buddhist Chaplain and Eco-Chaplain earning her certification through the Sati Center with her current teacher Gil Fronsdal. You can also study with Sam online through her many offerings.

Sam will facilitate two sessions of: “Cultivating Inner Peace of Mind through the Compassionate Heart” — Early Buddhist principles of peacemaking and mindfulness

Rabbi Samuel L. Spector

BIO: Rabbi Samuel L. Spector has been the rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami since 2018. He was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. He attended the University of California, San Diego, where he was an active brother of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity. Rabbi Spector graduated with Cum Laude honors with a B.A. in Judaic Studies and was elected Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Masters in Hebrew Letters and Rabbinic Ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles.

While in rabbinical school, Rabbi Spector served as the student rabbi of Congregation Etz Chaim in Merced, California and as a member of the Chaplain Candidate Program for the United States Navy.

Prior to coming to Congregation Kol Ami, Rabbi Spector served as the Associate Rabbi of Temple Judea in Tarzana, California. He is currently a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and serves on the advisory board for the Salt Lake Chamber and the Christian Center of Park City.

He is an avid fan of baseball, Jewish history, and traveling, having been to over 70 countries. He is conversational in Hebrew and Spanish. In his free time, you can find Rabbi Spector playing with Nezek, his Brittany Spaniel, and Walter, his Chocolate Lab. Rabbi Spector is married to Jill, an Idaho native who works in hospitality. They are proud parents of their daughters—Miriam, Esti, and Noa—and their bonus daughter, Yasamin, a high school student from Afghanistan.

Rabbi Spector will facilitate one workshop in the morning, “Arguments for the Sake of Heaven: How Disagreement and Confrontation can be Holy Experiences”—Jewish frameworks for sacred disagreement

Rev. Jamie White

BIO: Rev. Jamie White serves as the senior pastor of the historic First Presbyterian Church of Salt Lake City; prior to which she served congregations in California, Utah, and Pennsylvania. She received her theological education at Vanguard University, Fuller Seminary, and Princeton Seminary. Beyond her ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Jamie serves on several local non-profit boards, working alongside community partners to support mental health awareness, suicide prevention, and foster care; to resource those facing food, housing, and immigration crisis; and to foster interfaith dialogue. Jamie is also a founding board member of Kenya Partners Nakuru, a large non-profit working to break the cycle of poverty and disease for children in rural Kenya by providing healthcare, education, and community support. Jamie is married to Dave, a licensed clinical mental health therapist, and they have three children (Blake 26, Chase 22, Mila 12).

Jamie will facilitate two workshops: the first “Forgiveness: the Power and Freedom of Letting Go” Forgiveness from a Christian perspective, and the second will be facilitated with her therapist husband, Dave White: “When Faith Falls Apart: Moving through Doubt and Deconstruction to the Other side.”

Dave, who originally hails from Kansas City, works as a licensed mental health counselor, is a drummer and an avid outdoor enthusiast.

James Patton

BIO: James Patton is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice at Utah State University’s Heravi Peace Institute and a Founding Partner of the women-led consulting firm, Lead Integrity. He has conducted conflict transformation, reconciliation, and economic development for 25 years in 40 countries, including such programs as: training women Indigenous and Afro-descendent leaders on reconciliation to support reintegration of former combatants in Colombia; facilitating Cambodian Buddhists’ role in post-genocide social cohesion; developing frameworks and training religious actors in preventing violent extremism in Kenya, and; supporting the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Education in designing and implementing tolerance reforms in education.

James’ non-profit experience includes serving as President and CEO of the International Center for Religion & Diplomacy and Deputy Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean for the American Friends Service Committee, and his governmental experience includes leading stability operations assessments for the U.S. Department of State in South Sudan and enhancing the Religion and Conflict portfolio for USAID’s Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation.

James has served in various advisory roles, including on the U.S. Department of State’s Working Group on Religion and Foreign Policy, the United Nations Multi-Faith Advisory Council, and as the Religion and Conflict Co-Chair for the G20 Interfaith Forum. He is a Lifetime Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an Advisory Council Member for the Rumi Forum and the Center for Women, Faith, and Leadership. James has authored numerous policy and practitioner texts, including co-authoring the U.S. Institute of Peace publication, Religion and Conflict Guide Series: Religion and Reconciliation. James holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University and a Master of Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

James will facilitate two sessions of “The Core Elements of Reconciliation Practice” — Exploring the core elements of reconciliation

Dr. Wendy Ulrich

BIO: Wendy Ulrich, PhD, MBA, founder of Sixteen Stones Center for Growth, has been a licensed psychologist and management consultant for over thirty-five years. She is a former president of the Latter-day Saint Counseling and Psychotherapy Association, has been a visiting professor in both religion and psychology at Brigham Young University, and has served on the General Council of the Relief Society (worldwide women’s organization) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her books include Forgiving Ourselves, Weakness is not Sin, Let God Love You: Why We Don’t, How We Can, and best-selling The Why of Work: Creating Abundant Organizations that Win, co-authored with Dave Ulrich – her husband of fifty years … and counting!

Wendy will facilitate two sessions of “Families Can Be Together Forever – But What About Today?”

Have questions about Interfaith REPAIR? You can email us at: waymakersks@gmail.com!

Get Tickets to Interfaith REPAIR

“This is the work we’ve been waiting for.”

Since launching Waymakers as a pilot this summer, we’ve been deeply moved by how many people have engaged with this work—online, at our inaugural REPAIR event, and through our growing community. The idea that conflict can become a space for courage and connection is resonating widely. The need is real, and it’s growing.

As we look toward 2026, we’re excited to share what’s on our vision board:

Interfaith REPAIR - March 6, Salt Lake City (Note date change; tickets available Jan 2026)

A one-day gathering where participants from across faith traditions will explore how to build communities of peace and repair in an increasingly fractured world, together with:

• Dr. Ravi Gupta (Utah State University) - “How to Find Focus in an Age of Distraction using the Hindu Kirtan”

• Rabbi Samuel Spector (Congregation Kol Ami) - “How to Argue Like a Rabbi”

• Pastor Jamie White (First Presbyterian Church) - “A Jesus focused Response to Loneliness, Depression and Anxiety”

• More workshops to be announced from Buddhist, Catholic, and LDS faith leaders/peacemakers

REPAIR: D.C. Gathering - September, Washington D.C. (More info to come)

A gathering focused on bridging divides in our families, congregations, and communities, with a special emphasis on developing practical tools for navigating political polarization with integrity and courage. Patrick Mason and Judge Thomas Griffith (ret.) will keynote the event, and Chad Ford and other leading conflict resolution experts will run skills-building workshops.

Traveling REPAIR Workshops

In 2026, we hope to offer smaller, portable REPAIR workshops that can be hosted by communities across the continent (we hear you Canada!)—bringing skill-building and relational repair directly to congregations, campuses, workplaces, and civic groups.

Bridge Building across Faith Transitions and Differences

We intend to expand work around faith transitions, family strain, and shifting spiritual identities—an area where people consistently tell us they feel isolated, misunderstood, or unsure how to move forward. Our aim with this work is to help families and communities stay connected through these shifts by fostering empathy, deep listening, and compassionate dialogue.

These are the kinds of offerings your support makes possible: spaces where people learn to see each other, understand each other, and repair what is broken.

As we step into this next chapter, we’re asking our community to help sustain and grow this work. Our initial seed money has been used for our 2025 efforts and we are reaching out for our community to catalyze our work forward. If Waymakers has offered you insight, courage, or companionship in your own work of repair—or if you simply believe the world needs more people trained in peacemaking—we invite you to give generously.

Every gift, of any size, directly fuels this work.
Click here to contribute.

Your support doesn’t just sustain a program—it empowers a community and it builds a future where ordinary people have the tools to transform conflict into connection.

Thank you for standing with us in this work.

With gratitude,

The Waymakers Team
Chad Ford
Patrick Mason Katie Searle

Here’s what I saw, from behind-the-scenes..

Four months after fully kicking off our plans, it was time for REPAIR. Bright and early, the morning after the keynote, people started arriving for workshops (at 8 AM on a Friday!).

I could immediately feel a buzz of hope ripple through the lobby. Ahead of time, we’d asked participants to come with one conflict they wanted to work on in mind—something real, something they were hoping to repair. Our goal was to equip them with tools to build peace in their inner lives, their relationships, their families, congregations, communities, and beyond. And people came, notebooks in hand, leaning forward in that way people do when they’re really trying.

Over the next two days, what unfolded went far beyond “skills training.” Yes, we ran six 4-hour workshops at a time, twelve a day, twenty-four total. And yes, someone who stayed for the long haul could attend a max of 16 hours(!) in four workshops, yet somehow, we still averaged 3.37 workshop tickets per registrant. People were hungry. Many told us they wished the sessions were even longer. They wanted more time, more space, more breathing room. (We also heard loud and clear on the need for more stretch breaks!)

But what made this gathering remarkable was more than the logistics and even the expertise—it was the people. Folks came from every walk of life and shared stories, fears, griefs, and hopes they may never have spoken aloud before. They did it in spaces facilitated by some of the world’s best conflict-transformation leaders; but the courage in the room belonged to the participants themselves.

A total of 330 workshop participants showed the heck up, and of the 248 who completed a workshop review/self-assessment, when rating how confident they felt in their ability to approach conflict before workshop(s), they responded 2.64 on a 5-point scale. The average post-session rating was 4.07, a 54% increase in attendees’ perceived confidence and skill after only one session. 88% said the workshops were highly relevant to their personal or professional lives, and 99.6% said they learned something new or useful!

Beyond these hopeful numbers, participant responses capture the heart of the weekend:

“The best immersion experience I’ve ever had in my life.”

“The vulnerability and experiences of the facilitators were deeply moving and appreciated.”

I spent most of the conference zipping around addressing little event kinks, so I never actually sat in on a full workshop. But I got to absorb them through the comments people shared with me in breaks and afterward—raw, emotional, grateful accounts. And somehow, I also ended up helping facilitate one myself.

Public speaking is not in my comfort zone… give me planning, organizing, and behind-the-scenes chaos any day! But when Patrick and Chad asked if I would co-facilitate a workshop on navigating faith transitions with them, I gave myself a pep talk, and dug in. It felt important to offer multiple voices in what we knew would be a tender conversation.

Patrick led our session with history, data, and trends—helping people locate themselves or their loved ones along spectrums and pie charts (surprisingly moving for many!), and recounted the Prodigal Son through a new lens, offering a message of hope and reconnection. I then shared my own faith transition, as honestly as I could—its fragility, disorientation, the way it asked me to leave behind old versions of myself to find alignment within. I could sense the room soften with a shared understanding… the listening, the nods, the quiet exhale people make when realizing they’re not alone.

Chad offered a gift of vulnerability, sharing truly raw experiences that further broke open the space for people to share and witness one another, and then offered ways to walk with people at different points in their faith journeys (read his recounting of this session HERE).

It was simple and profound and reminded me that one of the most important things we can do is to just be with one another, fully, in life’s hardest and most ‘brutiful’ moments.

I am truly so appreciative— to the people who came, who shared their stories, and who trusted us enough to show up fully. I am grateful to the team and facilitators who created the conditions for this kind of openness, and to those who reminded me what it means to be human: fragile, brave, hurting, and hopeful all at once.

REPAIR is just the beginning of our bridge building. We left feeling inspired, humbled, and energized.

The Waymakers team is already looking ahead, exploring ways to make this work sustainable and accessible to even more people.

Thank you so much for being with us on this journey!

Katie

Twelve hours deep into facilitating workshops at REPAIR this weekend, I did something I haven’t done in a long time in a workshop.

I stopped being a teacher.

I was facilitating a workshop with Patrick Mason and Katie Searle on navigating faith transition. Patrick began the session brilliantly, explaining the data and helping the audience understand the trends and reasons behind faith transition. He ended with a beautiful re-telling of the Prodigal Son story.

Katie came up next. She spoke about her own faith transition in the most vulnerable way possible. She reminded us of both the fragility of change and the bravery it takes to find truth and belonging, especially when that means making choices that ask ourselves and others to leave behind old versions of ourselves. There were tears flowing as Katie, in her own graceful way, reminded us what it means to be human.

We took a break. I was up next. I had slides. I was ready to talk about “tools” on how we navigate faith transitions with partners, children, parents, and friends. I was going to tell a quick story about my first child and their faith transition from the perspective of a father and then dig into skills training.

None of what I prepared felt right.

I could sense the audience was hurting. I could see that the information and the story Katie told were reassuring and healing.

But there was still so much pain in the room. I could feel it.

And I no longer felt like teaching. I yearned to be with the people in the room — all of whom had shown up courageously for a weekend of training on how to repair their relationships. This may have been the most sensitive topic of the two-day event. Everyone, earlier in the workshop, had a chance to respond to some questions about why they were there.

They asked for hope. But hope planted in something real. Planted in the soil of pain.

I remembered Jim Ferrell’s keynote speech on his new book “You and We” that kicked off the conference.

Toward the end of the book Jim writes:

That two hours together had changed something inside of me. Being in that room, relating to Patrick, to Katie, to former students, current friends, and a lot of new faces … their hope, their pain, was actively transforming me.

When I teach, too often, I am a noun. I wanted to be a verb.

Jim ends the book with this quote from philosopher Martin Buber: “Many . . . acquire relations which they do not make real, that is, which they do not use to open themselves to another; they squander the most precious, irreplaceable, and irrecoverable material; they pass their life by.”

I did not want to squander this precious, irreplaceable moment.

So I put aside the teaching material for the day. I sat down. I told stories I had never told before about my pain, and hope, and grief and joy. And then I spent the next hour sitting next to and listening to those same stories from others in the room.

The emotion of it all was overwhelming. I put my arm around people. I held someone’s hand. I wiped tears from my eyes and felt my soul and the soul of others continue to transform.

This hotel conference room felt sacred to me — a temple to the least of these who are hurting and seeking repair.

Wrote one participant after the workshop:

“I’m still metabolizing this session - it was by far the most abundant, enlightening, complex, raw, painful, cathartic, and oddly hopeful session of the entire conference. The data surprised, unsettled, and comforted me. The deeply personal journeys changed me on a cellular level. And the transformation from grief to growth in an hour shocked me - this collective and individual journey from fear, pain, tension, exhaustion to possibility, clarity, hope, compassion, empowerment, action, and grace was one of the most intense inside-out transformation experiences of my life. [This is what] conflict transformation looks like and how we can literally sit with others in theirs.”

As I’ve pondered the experience the past few days, I’m reminded of the teachings of Confucius. His central teaching was “ren”—a term that appears more than one hundred times in his writings, the Analects. “This cardinal Confucian virtue,” writes Stephen Prothero in his book Religion Matters, “is usually translated as benevolence, but it is also rendered as humaneness, goodness, kindness, human-heartedness, humanity, altruism, and fellow-feeling.”

The Chinese character for ren is composed of two parts. On the left is the character representing a human being. On the right are two lines that represent the number two.

Someone who possesses the virtue of ren understands that human beings do not stand alone. Writes philosopher Herbert Fingarette, “For Confucius, unless there are at least two human beings, there can be no human being.”

In that moment, I don’t ever think I’ve understood ren, or the concepts Jim was teaching us in You and We more clearly. Together, we were more than the sum of our parts. To quote Jim, we were “compounding”.

“At this level, people open themselves to each other’s goals and realities, integrating them with their own. As a result, other people are no longer ‘over there’ — separate entities with whom we can cooperate across our divides—but are rather within us in meaningful ways.”

So, I want to thank all of the people who helped compounding happen at REPAIR.

Thank you to our sponsors Faith Matters, the One America Movement, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for believing in and supporting this work.

Thank you to our talented, creative, and passionate workshop presenters — Jim Ferrell, Patrick Mason, Katie Searle, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, Desmond Lomax, LaShawn Williams, Thomas McConkie, Seamus Fitzgerald, Amanda Ford, Melissa Mason, David Pulsipher, Jen Thomas, Emma Addams, Nanette Antwi-Donkor, and Frederick Reeves — who put so much time and spirit into their workshops.

And, most importantly, thank you to the people who showed up this weekend looking for hope and the tools to get there. Something larger than the sum of our parts took hold. There was a spirit in the room that transcended the polarization and contempt of our time.

I walked away with ren in my veins, and four days later, it is still pumping in spirit and truth.

Do you feel frustrated or hopeless about a conflict in your life? With yourself? A spouse? A child? A community or congregation member? Or, in the larger political divide? Waymakers is here to help.

​Bring your toughest conflicts to REPAIR, where world-class peacemakers lead skills-based, intensive workshops to help you navigate even the most challenging situations in your life.

Our inaugural event is October 23rd-25th in Provo, Utah. We are almost sold out of tickets, however there are a few remaining tickets for the following workshops. If you’ve been on the fence about joining us, now is the time!

October 20th is the last day to buy tickets.

Tickets are $50 per workshop. Use code “REPAIRBUNDLE” to receive a 20% off discount of admission to two or more different workshops

Here’s what’s still available:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 - MORNING SESSION

8:30 am to 12:30 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

LASHAWN WILLIAMS: “Relational Stamina: Staying Present Across Difference”(3 seats left)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 - AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

AMANDA FORD: “Parenting from the Inside Out: Raising Teens with Presence and Peace” (5 seats available)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 - MORNING SESSION

8:30 am to 12:30 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

SEAMUS FITZGERALD: “Wayfinding on Waves of Peace” (3 seats available)

CHAD FORD: “70x7: Navigating Conflict Jesus’s Way” (6 seats available)

THE ONE AMERICA MOVEMENT: “The Roots of Polarization” (8 seats available)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 - AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

AMANDA FORD & MELISSA MASON: “Peacemaking from the Inside Out: The Inner Work of Repair” (6 seats available)

DESMOND LOMAX: “Getting Ready: How to Engage Conflict within Yourself with Purpose & Authenticity” (3 seats available)

CLAIR CANFIELD: “Acquainted with Grief: Finding our Way Back to Wholeness” (4 seats available)

LASHAWN WILLIAMS: “Relational Stamina: Staying Present Across Difference”(7 seats available)

CHAD FORD, PATRICK MASON & KATIE SEARLE: “Preserving Love in Faith Transitions” (8 seats available)

JENNIFER THOMAS & EMMA ADDAMS: “Repair in Polarized Times” (8 seats available)

Get tickets to REPAIR

For this three part bonus mini-series of Proclaim Peace, hosts Jennifer Thomas and Patrick Mason are joined by Nealin Parker from Common Ground to reflect on recent tragic events affecting the Latter-day Saint community, including the death of President Nelson and a horrific attack on a local ward that resulted in multiple fatalities.

As they process these heavy developments, they discuss the emotional toll on church members and the broader implications for peace. The episode serves as a heartfelt exploration of grief, community resilience, and the principles of the gospel that can guide us in difficult times.

Watch on YouTube here:

Listen on Spotify:

Listen on Apple Podcasts:

REPAIR is just a few weeks away!

We are almost sold out of tickets, however there are a few remaining tickets for the following workshops. If you’ve been on the fence about joining us, now is the time!

Tickets are $50 per workshop. Use code “REPAIRBUNDLE” to receive a 20% off discount of admission to two or more different workshops

Here’s what’s available:

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 - MORNING SESSION

8:30 am to 12:30 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

LASHAWN WILLIAMS: “Relational Stamina: Staying Present Across Difference”(3 seats left)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 - AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

AMANDA FORD: “Parenting from the Inside Out: Raising Teens with Presence and Peace” (5 seats available)

JENNIFER THOMAS & EMMA ADDAMS: “Repair in Polarized Times” (3 seats available)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 - MORNING SESSION

8:30 am to 12:30 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

SEAMUS FITZGERALD: “Wayfinding on Waves of Peace” (4 seats available)

CHAD FORD: “70x7: Navigating Conflict Jesus’s Way” (7 seats available)

THE ONE AMERICA MOVEMENT: “The Roots of Polarization” (10 seats available)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25 - AFTERNOON SESSION

2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Marriott Hotel and Conference Center, 101 W, 100 N, Provo, Utah

AMANDA FORD & MELISSA MASON: “Peacemaking from the Inside Out: The Inner Work of Repair” (8 seats available)

DESMOND LOMAX: “Getting Ready: How to Engage Conflict within Yourself with Purpose & Authenticity” (3 seats available)

CLAIR CANFIELD: “Acquainted with Grief: Finding our Way Back to Wholeness” (5 seats available)

LASHAWN WILLIAMS: “Relational Stamina: Staying Present Across Difference”(8 seats available)

CHAD FORD, PATRICK MASON & KATIE SEARLE: “Preserving Love in Faith Transitions” (10 seats available)

JENNIFER THOMAS & EMMA ADDAMS: “Repair in Polarized Times”(80 seats available) (8 seats available)

Get tickets to REPAIR

We often think of peace as something that happens out there — in our families, communities, or the wider world. We imagine it as a state we arrive at once conflict has been resolved, once everyone agrees, once the dust settles. But most lasting repair begins somewhere quieter and closer: within ourselves.

When we feel tension, anger, fear, or shame, those emotions don’t just affect our own inner landscape — they ripple outward. The way we relate to our own pain shapes the way we relate to others. When we meet our internal conflict with curiosity instead of judgment, gentleness instead of avoidance, we start to open space for genuine peace to take root.

When we learn to meet our own discomfort with gentleness, we create the capacity to meet others’ discomfort with the same compassion. When we make peace with our own contradictions, we become less reactive and more open to the complexity of others.

Melissa Mason, CSW, is a clinical social worker and therapist who integrates mindfulness, relational therapy, and evidence-based approaches to support individuals and couples. She specializes in navigating issues around sex, desire, trust, and emotional regulation. Known for her warm, grounded presence, Melissa creates a safe space for clients to explore their stories, reclaim vitality, and cultivate peace from within.

Amanda Ford, LCSW, is a clinical social worker, therapist, educator, and yoga teacher. She specializes in mindfulness-based therapy and relational healing, working with individuals, families, and students to foster emotional resilience, spiritual integration, and compassionate connection. Amanda also teaches social work and peace studies at Utah State University, where she helps future practitioners explore how personal awareness and community care intersect.

Together, Melissa and Amanda bring a rare blend of professional expertise and deep humanity to this work — bridging the disciplines of therapy, mindfulness, and peacemaking with compassion and care.

At REPAIR, Melissa and Amanda will lead an experiential workshop, Peacemaking from the Inside Out: The Inner Work of Repair, designed for those seeking peace, tools, and a renewed capacity to live and love with clarity.

Peacemaking from the Inside Out: The Inner Work of Repair

Saturday, October 25, 8:30am-12:30pm (sold out) & 2:00pm-6:00pm

Description: This workshop will help you navigate the inner conflict that drives external struggles, and offers practical tools for cultivating peace within yourself and relationships. Through interactive exercises using mindfulness, movement, and creative expression, you will be guided toward healing and resolution. Come as you are and leave with tools, insights, and a deeper sense of peace.

Through mindfulness, movement (i.e. gentle yoga), and creative expression, Amanda and Melissa will guide attendees toward:

• Tools that foster clarity, emotional regulation, and compassionate connection

• Tending inner wounds

• Deeper sense of calm & understanding

• Healing and resolution

Melissa and Amanda emphasize that peacemaking is not the same as appeasement. It’s not bypassing discomfort or pretending everything is okay. True peacemaking begins with honesty — noticing where we are out of alignment, where judgment lingers, where pain still speaks.

Get tickets to REPAIR

Repair is not about perfection — it’s about practice. It’s the ongoing process of tending to what’s hurt or fragmented within us, so we can show up more whole for others. By slowing down and listening inwardly, we start to transform how we engage outwardly.

In a world saturated with noise and urgency, peace can feel like a luxury. But it’s actually a form of strength — a discipline that starts with how we tend to our own inner world.

Join Melissa & Amanda to do this inner work, Saturday, October 25 8:30am (sold out) or 2:00pm at REPAIR.

Can’t wait to see you in October!